> The entire comparison hinges on people only making simple factual searches ... on both search engines and LLMs. I disagree, but I can see why someone might s

> The entire comparison hinges on people only making simple factual searches ... on both search engines and LLMs. I disagree, but I can see why someone might say this, because the article's author writes: > So let's compare LLMs to web search. I'm choosing search as the comparison since it's in the same vicinity and since it's something everyone uses and nobody pays for, not because I'm suggesting that ungrounded generative AI is a good substitute for search. Still, the article's analysis of "is an LLM API subsidized or not?" does not _rely_ on a comparison with search engines. The fundamental analysis is straightforward: comparing {price versus cost} per unit (of something). The goal is figure out the marginal gain/loss per unit. For an LLM, the unit is often a token or an API call. Summary: the comparison against search engine costs is not required to assess if an LLM APIs is subsidized or not.