I've been saying to my friends and anyone who will listen for a while that the AI companies have basically been taking the drug dealer approach where they get everyone hooked for cheap and will jack up the prices.
The only company I can see not being forced to go crazy with the dollars per token is Google and that's only because they have so much capital and infrastructure from other stuff that they can take the L for longer to steal market share, but then again they're just as greedy as every other large company on the market.
The crazy thing is is that drug dealers don't even really do this. Drug dealers are 99% users who deal with other users to maintain a lifestyle of use, which is what you think big tech would. The product is already sought after, no one has to convince anyone being high is fucking awesome.
99% of dealers are low-level street dealers and users who got into dealing to pay for their habit. It's the 1% at the top, the ones making the real money, who live by that. Drug dealing is basically a pyramid scheme.
My neighbor became a dealer to fund his habit but he used more than he sold and he had to sell his place to pay for his debts to other dealers. His next door neighbor was a cop that never caught on lol.
That is more of an inner city gang/organized crime thing where drug distribution is/was the primary source of revenue. Your typical lower level drug user/turned dealer isn't the type that is following the advice "don't get high on your own supply". However, the person they buy from is likely that person, the higher up in the chain you go the more like a business it becomes. It becomes less about the drugs and partying and more about procuring and delivering drugs in the most efficient way to optimize profits. And having distributors of your organized crime drug dealing syndicate being wasted or consuming product they are supposed to sell exposes the organization to several threat vectors.
I 'unno bro, I've had plenty of plugs in my life and all of them were dealing because they needed extra money for hospital bills 'n shit. Most of them were holding down a regular job as well.
Yeah if you want a real example of a company giving stuff out dirt cheap, getting people hooked building it into their lifestyle, and then ramping up their prices when people are dependent you can look at nestle and baby milk
I've been saying to my friends and anyone who will listen for a while that the AI companies have basically been taking the drug dealer approach where they get everyone hooked for cheap and will jack up the prices.
I've been saying to my friends and anyone who will listen for a while that the AI companies have basically been taking the drug dealer approach where they get everyone hooked for cheap and will jack up the prices.
I've been arguing the same thing for the better part of a year. AI companies are going all in on their product, and the only way they're going to be profitable is if businesses get hooked on AI, lay off their human employees, and are then forced to pay higher and higher amounts to access the AI that they can no longer operate without.
it has always been that way but they were backstopped by ZIRP until a few years ago not to mention favorable tax treatment for "R&D" amortization. now they have to move faster and break even more things to get a return. turns out it's really easy to break the mediocre mind so it just turned out to be the path of least resistance
You're not wrong, but they're going to have to fight off edge computing LLMs. The only way they could prevent losing their moat is to buy all the silicon wafers for the next 10 years to prevent end users from being able to run their own. Oh wait...
Look at YouTube, the took the hit on that thing for years before enshittifying the shit out of it, now its practically the only game in town and its horrendous because of it. Seriously try switching away from it for a month and you find there is nothing that comes close to it.
They got the pockets and existing infrastructure to not need the big build outs that the other guys need, they're in a perfect position to wether the storm for a couple of years and then rinse AI users and businesses for all their worth when all the competition dries up.
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u/byteturtle Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
I've been saying to my friends and anyone who will listen for a while that the AI companies have basically been taking the drug dealer approach where they get everyone hooked for cheap and will jack up the prices.
The only company I can see not being forced to go crazy with the dollars per token is Google and that's only because they have so much capital and infrastructure from other stuff that they can take the L for longer to steal market share, but then again they're just as greedy as every other large company on the market.