Back in April, the company said it would move all Copilot plans to a usage-based system that bills users based on actual AI consumption, measured in tokens,...
  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    Ever run an AI model locally? If you want the most capability you need a fast GPU with 32-48gb RAM. And that’s all for you, ONE user.

    Copilot has millions of users, with tens or hundreds of thousands of them hitting the AI all at once. Each one needs $thousands worth of GPU and RAM dedicated to them for the length of their query processing.

    Where do you think the money to buy all that hardware comes from? You see OpenAI buying a double digit percentage of the world’s RAM production, you think they got it on clearance sale?

    No, there are investors. Investors who are pouring hundreds of billions into this AI stuff. And they don’t do this because it’s fun, they do it because they expect a BIG return.

    So what’s going on is just like your neighborhood drug pusher, only the drug pusher is more honest. He says ‘first hit’s free, man’. AI company says ‘AI models are an easy and cost effective way to modernize your workflow!’; they don’t tell you that once you’ve integrated them and fired all the humans who know how to do the work, the price is gonna go way up.

    Because the fact is, there IS a real cost of AI compute. GPU time, or at the large scale, datacenter space, power, cooling, etc.

    In another few months to few years, the C-suites will stop huffing the koolaid and will start doing cost-benefit analysis on where AI is and isn’t cost-effective vs. humans. With any luck (for the AI people) by that time the AIs will be good enough that it’s a clear benefit. If not this bubble’s gonna pop.

    • Rooster326@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      15 days ago

      Has anyone ever actually had a drug dealer giving out free hits?

      I feel like that’s the biggest lie DARE ever told.

      • MIDItheKID@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        15 days ago

        DARE told so many lies. I was told that if I smoked weed, it would ruin my life and I would become a helpless drug addict. Then I smoked weed and that didn’t happen. Then they got me thinking “what else did they lie to me about?”.

      • Constant Pain@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        15 days ago

        When I was a teen, I was offered drugs for free more than once, so it’s not all a lie. Maybe it is just uncommon in many places.

        I’m Brazilian, BTW.

  • teft@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    Man, enshittification is happening so fast for ai. Imagine the next big thing. It’ll be enshittified prior to release.

    • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      This isn’t enshittification in the traditional sense, they haven’t captured the market enough for that. They’re just panicking because they’re burning cash way too fast.

        • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          16 days ago

          Don’t wanna be “that guy”, but if if 95% of the time people use it to generally mean “greedy companies making things shitty to try and wring an extra buck”, then that just is what that word means now.

          It leaves a vacuum for the concept it was originally intended to describe, but that’s how she goes.

    • Ohi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      16 days ago

      Yup, same. x57 for GPT 5.5 now?! The GitHub agent architecture was hot as hell and allowed me to work on projects without ever bootstrapping it locally, but there is no way I’m gonna get sucked into spending hundreds a month. It felt good seeing that $250 refund come through for my yearly plan. I’ll take those funds to Claude or Codex directly. Throttled usage is way better than being fucked over by a glorified reseller.

    • minorkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      01·
      15 days ago

      I’m sure they wanted to drag out the adoption longer than it was viable, too. Didn’t quite get everyone dependent.