AI is Destroying Critical Thinking of People

imccafey said:

I do feel as though AI was never meant for casual use. Feels like a professional tool that was spec'd for the commercial market for some reason. I doubt John Everyman could pay the exorbitant rates AI should be worth for the amount of power it consumes and considering what most non-professionals use their allocations for. IDK, feels like there's a mismatch here that's giving AI both a bad rep and potentially unsustainable business model.

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cosmoaccs said:

Honestly this is a really interesting point kinda never thought about it that way. quick question tho - when u say the rates "should be worth" way more, do u think the free/cheap tiers we get now are basically bein subsidised by VC money, and once that dries up we're all gonna get hit with real pricing? cuz that would explain alot tbh

also curious what u mean by "most non-professionals use their allocations for" lol, u thinkin like memes n chatbot smalltalk vs actual productive work? feels like theres a big split there fr

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imccafey said:

I mean pretty much. I suspect there's a fair amount of subsidisation going on there ATM, probably not purely VC money though. There's infra costs, competition between providers, investor expectations, usual stuff, etc. all mixed in there. But I'd be surprised if today's consumer pricing is what AI ultimately settles at once the market matures.

The allocations part, I mostly mean the average person's usage. A lot of it is probably casual chat, entertainment, basic questions, image generation, etc. Compare that to professional use cases that can justify the compute cost a lot more easily. There's the mismatch. You're essentially giving people access to an extremely expensive tool for less, even free at times, and a lot of them are using it for things they could've done without it. The amount of power used is generally about the same between pro vs non-pro usage, but only the professional usage is likely to generate enough economic value to justify that cost and feed back into the business loop.

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cosmoaccs said:

Yeah thats a fair point do u reckon prices will eventually go up alot for casual/free tier users once the subsidys dry up, or will companies just start limiting what free/casual users can actually do instead (like less messages, lower quality models etc)? also curious what happens to all the "non economically productive" usage once that shift happens, does it just dissapear or do ppl end up paying for it anyway cuz its already baked into their workflow by then

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