The big missing thing between both the metaphor in the OP's link and yours is that I just can't fathom any of these companies being able to raise a paying subsc

The big missing thing between both the metaphor in the OP's link and yours is that I just can't fathom any of these companies being able to raise a paying subscriber base that can actually cover the outrageous costs of this tech. It feels like a pipe dream. Putting aside that I fundamentally don't think AGI is in the tech tree of LLM, if you will, that there's no route from the latter to the former: even if there is, even if it takes, I dunno, ten years: I just don't think ChatGPT is a compelling enough product to fund about $70 billion in research costs. And sure, they aren't having to yet thanks to generous input from various commercial and private interests but like... if this is going to be a stable product at some point, analogous to something like AWS, doesn't it have to... actually make some money? Like sure, I use ChatGPT now. I use the free version on their website and I have some fun with AI dungeon and occasionally use generative fill in Photoshop. I paid for AI dungeon (for awhile, until I realized their free models actually work better for how I like to play) but am now on the free version. I don't pay for ChatGPT's advanced models, because nothing I've seen in the trial makes it more compelling an offering than the free version. Adobe Firefly came to me free as an addon to my creative cloud subscription, but like, if Adobe increased the price, I'm not going to pay for it. I use it because they effectively gave it to me for free with my existing purchase. And I've played with Copilot a bit too, but honestly found it more annoying than useful and I'm certainly not paying for that either. And I realize I am not everyone and obviously there are people out there paying for it (I know a few in fact!) but is there enough of those people ready to swipe cards for... fancy autocomplete? Text generation? Like... this stuff is neat. And that's about where I put it for myself: "it's neat." OpenAI supposedly has 3.9 million subscribers right now, and if those people had to foot that 7 billion annual spend to continue development, that's about $150 a month. This product has to get a LOT, LOT better before I personally am ready to drop a tenth of that, let alone that much. And I realize this is all back-of-napkin math here but still: the expenses of these AI companies seem so completely out of step with anything approaching an actual paying user base, so hilariously outstripping even the investment they're getting from other established tech companies, that it makes me wonder how this is ever, ever going to make so much as a dime for all these investors. In contrast, I never had a similar question about cars, or AWS. The pitch of AWS makes perfect sense: you get a server to use on the internet for whatever purpose, and you don't have to build the thing, you don't need to handle HVAC or space, you don't need a last-mile internet connection to maintain, and if you need more compute or storage or whatever, you move a slider instead of having to pop a case open and install a new hard drive. That's absolutely a win and people will pay for it. Who's paying for AI and why?