5 ms·

Metered billing makes sense for B2B infrastructure-as-a-service type products (AWS), where as your company grows both you and the infra provider know the bill w

Metered billing makes sense for B2B infrastructure-as-a-service type products (AWS), where as your company grows both you and the infra provider know the bill will grow manageably over time. Infra is set it and forget it. But for AI in the context of point-solutions and on-the-job use cases, metered billing is a death blow. In this context, metered is a massive incentive to not use the product and requires the huge friction of having to do a cost/benefit analysis before every task. And if you're using it at work you may even need management sign-off before you can use it again. For a tool that's intended to amplify productivity, very few humans want to make a cost/benefit analysis 250 times a day whether it's worth $3 to code up a boilerplate or not. On metered billing, they just wont use it.

inetknght 1y ago
> and requires the huge friction of having to do a cost/benefit analysis before every task That's what we're supposed to do, right? So let's see if we can spend a few tokens to ask the LLM for a cost/benefit analysis of using an LLM to solve the problem. I'd bet we can trust the result...
redhale 1y ago
100,% this. PAYG bill anxiety is such a barrier that I will not use it AT ALL if I'm paying the bill. And even when my company is paying, I feel a need to be too careful as to negate much of the benefit. Raise the prices of the all-inclusive plans if need be. But don't make me use (or NOT use) the API for my day-to-day.
armchairhacker 1y ago
People don't have issues paying for metered electricity, heat, and water. AFAIK most people are aware of when they're wasting power/heat/water but don't go to extremes, e.g. don't run the shower constantly but don't shower with a bucket.
- latentsea 1y ago
  LLMs are not essential for survival.
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    Yet.
    - latentsea 1y ago
      Ever.
      - dredmorbius 1y ago
        My point is that many technologies which were once thought of as luxuries eventually come necessities. Socially if not physically. Adam Smith of all people writes of this: By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/Chapter_2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...> Running water, sewerage, gas service, home postal service, electricity, automobiles, telephone service, Internet service, mobile phones, universal healthcare, and many other utilities were once considered luxuries but came to be recognised as essentials.
        latentsea 1y ago
        I don't need my linen shirt either. I'll be just fine, naked in the forest. Jokes aside, I already don't live without my LLM. Rely on it too much. Though more for comfort than survival.
- great_psy 1y ago
  But leaving a light on 2x the time will equal very close to 2x the price. Asking “what day is today” vs “create this api endpoint to adjust the inventory” will cost vastly different. And honestly I have no clue where to start to even estimate the cost unless I run the query.
- azinman2 1y ago
  But what you're missing is imagine you could pay a flat fee for all your utilities... and that fee is quite low. And imagine a very competitive marketplace where the switching costs are basically zero. What do you think will happen?
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    There are utilities which offer a uniform-monthly-billing option. PG&E in California does so as "Budget Billing": Budget Billing is a free program that helps you easily manage your monthly energy costs . We calculate your monthly payment amount based on your average energy costs over the last 12 months and adjust your payment amount each month, so that you don't have big spikes on your bill. While it's not a savings program, Budget Billing helps you stay in control of your bill by avoiding seasonal bill spikes. <https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financial-assistance/budget-billing-program.html https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financ...>
    - namibj 1y ago
      That's the default in Germany due to yearly meter reading. It's not at all flat rate, though, as you'll settle the balance after the year like a tax filing (refund or back pay).
      - dredmorbius 1y ago
        PG&E's programme also works with a re-balancing of payments to account for over- or under-utilisation. My understanding of recent changes to the system are that those adjustments themselves are also spread out over a number of months, again to increase overall predictability and avoid surprise billing.
        namibj 1y ago
        Ahhh, hmmm, fair. The German approach to surprises is to take the tariff sheet that basically boils down to a flat connection fee + price-per-kWh (the meter counts in kWh), sometimes split over multiple counters for tariff's that distinguish between prime time and off-time consumption, and often coming in two or three variants which are chosen between based on what the counter says (they tend to bump the connection fee and drop the price-per-kWh above a yearly kWh threshold). Then the consumer goes to look at the meter whenever the consumer wants, calculates via simple delta (subtract baseline value from current counter value) how much has already been used in this measuring period, and compares to for example the previous year around the same time. Or if usage is sufficiently even across a year, one does some simple linear extrapolation ("x days have passed since the start of this metering period, y_start was the start counter value, y_now is the current counter value, z days long is the current metering period"->"z * (y_now - y_start) / x"). I assume the utility support would explain this way of calculating/predicting/tracking if one asks nicely. The reasons for not smoothing out further than monthly payment intervals in a yearly measurement interval is AFAIK due to regulatory restrictions on credit/debt, and because this is more due to a metering process efficciency/overhead limitation than because they inherently want to offer these fixed/steady payments: you don't want to send out a meter reader more than about once a year, and doing it that often also conveniently spreads out seasonal variations letting the bill predictions(/estimates used for calculating the monthly payments that are due) work much nicer and easier to understand than some summer/winter split tracking. Note this information is all about the default/baseline tariffs, which the local electrical energy seller (which is a distinct entity from the local electrical power/grid provider, who is the one that has the natural monopoly) can't refuse due to credit score or the like and which can't have any remotely long term/notice periods. Many tariffs are quite similar in style, though, due to the inherent limitations of yearly-read non-smart energy consumption counters. Around now seems to be where finally you as a customer can demand upgrade to a smart meter which notably (from my understanding) gains the ability to live-report energy flux for 15 minute quantization/intervals, matching the European super grid's electricity market. A nice side-effect closely related to that market quantization is that these meters allow selling PV production to other units/properties nearby (at least where the connection/current path doesn't actually go through grid operator owned wiring, e.g. units in an apartment building) without having to pay grid fees on that energy sale despite the energy going through the meters instead of being sold through a behind-the-meter bypass feed/line. That "virtual" metering of the hyper-local PV energy sale makes it just much easier in terms of infrastructure, compared to some actual real-time load-balancing setup that somehow spreads an apartment building's monolithic PV array's power across multiple units's behind-the-meter breakerboxes taking care to not wastefully oversupply any one as backfeed would at best be compensated at about a third of the all-fees-included retail rate (it's about the same as the grid fee part that's payable by non-local buyers of electricity, both around 10ct/kWh) instead of 1:1 compensating the approximately 30ct/kWh buy-rate of some local apartment's meter. Also, less active infrastructure at a scale that doesn't afford on-site 24/7 staffing for monitoring and customer-side-uptime-enhancing redundancy features is always good. I'm counting a mere meter that only meters and doesn't steer/control electricity as passive infrastructure from the power flow's POV. Especially if it's built to fail in a way where power still flows but the metering/counting is broken, at least where there's more than just yearly reporting from the meter (and thus non-metering would be caught quickly). Electricity uptime of this grade is something with perhaps underappreciated benefits: pretty much all but critical systems and those that run non-crash-safe software will not require a UPS, as power outages at least in urban areas (except those where local distribution systems drown in climate change flash flooding) happen once every few years, either due to larger-scale blackouts (entire city/metro/state) or from non-redundant local infrastructure dying of old age.
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  Except of course that they do: "Texas freeze raises concerns about ‘ridiculous’ variable rate bills" (2021) HOUSTON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - In Spring, Texas, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Houston, Akilah Scott-Amos is staring down a more than $11,000 electric bill for this month, a far cry from her $34 bill at this time last year. "What am I going to do?" Scott-Amos, 43, said. She was among the millions of Texas residents who lost power during several days of bitter cold that caused the state's electrical grid, operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to break down. "I guess the option is, what, I'll pay it? I just don't feel like we should have to." <https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-freeze-raises-concerns-about-ridiculous-variable-rate-bills-2021-02-23/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-freeze-raises-...> This instance involves variable rate billing systems, where the cost per unit use can vary tremendously. There are also stories you'll find where equipment issues (broken water or gas mains, malfunctioning electrical equipment, failure to terminate per-minute-billed telephone calls, etc.). I can remember the latter featuring in some compendium of records (possibly Guiness) for a family who hadn't realised that they needed to hang up the phone between calls and got hit with a staggering (at least for the time) bill. More recently, data and roaming charges tend to be culprits: <https://worthly.com/most-expensive/expensive-phone-bills-time/ https://worthly.com/most-expensive/expensive-phone-bills-tim...> In all of these cases, a significant problem is that usage is all but entirely divorced from metering, and people have no idea of what their actual usage patterns are until "invoice therapy" arrives. (A term I'm borrowing from a friend, though I'll note that monthly feedback cycles on what are typically hourly/daily decisionmaking patterns proves a poor systems control theory match.)
- Nevermark 1y ago
  People don't have stable or seasonal "token needs" or wants. Nor do they have stable don't-give-me-any-better "answer quality" expectations from models. At least not yet. AI model services don't have any version of the typical utility's geographical market protection or monopoly. Worse, they have all been funded for massive loss-leader hyper growth, so to survive in the short term, they have to compete on who can raise and lose more. Then looking into the long term, unlike the Uber's of the world, the point where a market will reach saturation, survivors finally "win", and margins can transition from negative to positive, keeps moving away. I don't see any way in which utility bills are economically comparable to this situation. The only "hope" the general AI service business has, is that at some point one of them pulls far enough ahead of the others that everyone else's economics collapse first. Like a very high speed version of the centralization in advanced chip fabs. But with no profitability until the centralization happens. Brutal.
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  There is no "pay $25/month for unlimited electricity" option. And if there was, everyone would use that and all metered options would go broke overnight. Followed fairly shortly by the company offering unlimited flat-rate deals. Which is what TFA describes, and is why there is no unlimited flat-rate deal for utilities. But that's a mature market that is not relying on growth for valuations, and isn't appealing to VCs trained on net/mobile/crypto bubbles.
  - portaouflop 1y ago
    I don’t know about you but where I live the electricity companies definitely offer a “flat rate” for electricity. But those contracts are so much more expensive that virtually no one gets them.
    - stavros 1y ago
      Where do you live that you can get a flat rate for unlimited electricity? I've never heard of this (I live in Greece).
      - sensanaty 1y ago
        Dunno if it counts because it's not unlimited usage for a flat rate, but in the Netherlands a lot of utilities like water, gas and electricity are billed at the same flat rate every month, then once a year they do a calculation and you get money back (or have to pay more if your usage was higher) based on actual usage. I can't see any situation where true unlimited usage for a flat rate, even a wildly expensive and uneconomical one, would make any sense because as often happens you'd basically be incentivizing people to waste as much gas, electricity and water as they possibly can to "get their money's worth" or whatever, and we should be encouraging the exact opposite for those 3 things.
        stavros 1y ago
        I agree with you, that's why I can't believe it exists anywhere. What you mention is basically to reduce the costs of counting, and is still usage-based metering, just with a reasonable guess to make payment more frequent. Power in Greece works the same way, except you (are supposed to) get the guess one month and the count the next (and pay the difference). In practice, they count less often than that.
- latexr 1y ago
  Those utilities are fairly easy to track in a way that digital services aren’t. Lights in my home consume energy at a consistent rate. Ditto for water coming out of the faucet; if I open it more, I can see it moving more water and costing more. On the web, it’s not clear that one website is being massively more wasteful than another. From your perspective you’re engaging in the same behaviour (opening a website) but for reasons outside your control you may be spending more than intended. I remember not having unlimited internet traffic at home and always having to worry. These days, I pay a flat monthly fee for internet access.
- pembrook 1y ago
  Utilities are infra-as-a-service. The point is that infrastructure is non-optional, you're not going to decide not to use it, and you rarely switch (in the case of utilities you often CAN'T switch). You set it and forget it. AI in the context of an end-user product or tool is not that (unless you're running the AI product company, where it becomes infra for you). It's a blender or a kitchenaid mixer. Let's say companies gave those away for free but only charged metered fees to use them. If you had to pay $4 to blend something or run your mixer (and weren't sure if the tool would get it right the first time or you'd have to re-do it 5 times) you'd use them much less. They are optional. You'd treat the decision to bake like a financial one. Nobody asks their spouse if it's okay to take a shower.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  Imagine all your home appliances ran on magic instead of electricity, and you paid the magic company for each unit of magic used, except you had no idea how much magic each appliance needed to operate.
drak0n1c 1y ago
Venice AI has a solution where I stake their Base ERC20 token, and in exchange I get a proportional amount of free daily-refreshing API access to a variety of high-powered open source models, besides the staking yield and free Pro subscription level access to their webapp. It's great for free experimentation when coding apps that use API inference, it's actually motivating to build uses for it because it feels akin to a benefit that otherwise goes unused. Of course there is some price risk in holding their crypto token. After a large spike and drop in the first couple days, it's held steady for 6 months with a $2-$3 floor, possibly due to it having that baseline utility. Mentally, it's far more comfortable to me to stake a principal sum that I can wholly unstake in the future, than to spend on per-request fees.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  [dead]

inetknght 1y ago

> and requires the huge friction of having to do a cost/benefit analysis before every task That's what we're supposed to do, right? So let's see if we can spend a few tokens to ask the LLM for a cost/benefit analysis of using an LLM to solve the problem. I'd bet we can trust the result...

redhale 1y ago

100,% this. PAYG bill anxiety is such a barrier that I will not use it AT ALL if I'm paying the bill. And even when my company is paying, I feel a need to be too careful as to negate much of the benefit. Raise the prices of the all-inclusive plans if need be. But don't make me use (or NOT use) the API for my day-to-day.

armchairhacker 1y ago

People don't have issues paying for metered electricity, heat, and water. AFAIK most people are aware of when they're wasting power/heat/water but don't go to extremes, e.g. don't run the shower constantly but don't shower with a bucket.

latentsea 1y ago
LLMs are not essential for survival.
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  Yet.
  - latentsea 1y ago
    Ever.
    - dredmorbius 1y ago
      My point is that many technologies which were once thought of as luxuries eventually come necessities. Socially if not physically. Adam Smith of all people writes of this: By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/Chapter_2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...> Running water, sewerage, gas service, home postal service, electricity, automobiles, telephone service, Internet service, mobile phones, universal healthcare, and many other utilities were once considered luxuries but came to be recognised as essentials.
      - latentsea 1y ago
        I don't need my linen shirt either. I'll be just fine, naked in the forest. Jokes aside, I already don't live without my LLM. Rely on it too much. Though more for comfort than survival.
great_psy 1y ago
But leaving a light on 2x the time will equal very close to 2x the price. Asking “what day is today” vs “create this api endpoint to adjust the inventory” will cost vastly different. And honestly I have no clue where to start to even estimate the cost unless I run the query.
azinman2 1y ago
But what you're missing is imagine you could pay a flat fee for all your utilities... and that fee is quite low. And imagine a very competitive marketplace where the switching costs are basically zero. What do you think will happen?
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  There are utilities which offer a uniform-monthly-billing option. PG&E in California does so as "Budget Billing": Budget Billing is a free program that helps you easily manage your monthly energy costs . We calculate your monthly payment amount based on your average energy costs over the last 12 months and adjust your payment amount each month, so that you don't have big spikes on your bill. While it's not a savings program, Budget Billing helps you stay in control of your bill by avoiding seasonal bill spikes. <https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financial-assistance/budget-billing-program.html https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financ...>
  - namibj 1y ago
    That's the default in Germany due to yearly meter reading. It's not at all flat rate, though, as you'll settle the balance after the year like a tax filing (refund or back pay).
    - dredmorbius 1y ago
      PG&E's programme also works with a re-balancing of payments to account for over- or under-utilisation. My understanding of recent changes to the system are that those adjustments themselves are also spread out over a number of months, again to increase overall predictability and avoid surprise billing.
      - namibj 1y ago
        Ahhh, hmmm, fair. The German approach to surprises is to take the tariff sheet that basically boils down to a flat connection fee + price-per-kWh (the meter counts in kWh), sometimes split over multiple counters for tariff's that distinguish between prime time and off-time consumption, and often coming in two or three variants which are chosen between based on what the counter says (they tend to bump the connection fee and drop the price-per-kWh above a yearly kWh threshold). Then the consumer goes to look at the meter whenever the consumer wants, calculates via simple delta (subtract baseline value from current counter value) how much has already been used in this measuring period, and compares to for example the previous year around the same time. Or if usage is sufficiently even across a year, one does some simple linear extrapolation ("x days have passed since the start of this metering period, y_start was the start counter value, y_now is the current counter value, z days long is the current metering period"->"z * (y_now - y_start) / x"). I assume the utility support would explain this way of calculating/predicting/tracking if one asks nicely. The reasons for not smoothing out further than monthly payment intervals in a yearly measurement interval is AFAIK due to regulatory restrictions on credit/debt, and because this is more due to a metering process efficciency/overhead limitation than because they inherently want to offer these fixed/steady payments: you don't want to send out a meter reader more than about once a year, and doing it that often also conveniently spreads out seasonal variations letting the bill predictions(/estimates used for calculating the monthly payments that are due) work much nicer and easier to understand than some summer/winter split tracking. Note this information is all about the default/baseline tariffs, which the local electrical energy seller (which is a distinct entity from the local electrical power/grid provider, who is the one that has the natural monopoly) can't refuse due to credit score or the like and which can't have any remotely long term/notice periods. Many tariffs are quite similar in style, though, due to the inherent limitations of yearly-read non-smart energy consumption counters. Around now seems to be where finally you as a customer can demand upgrade to a smart meter which notably (from my understanding) gains the ability to live-report energy flux for 15 minute quantization/intervals, matching the European super grid's electricity market. A nice side-effect closely related to that market quantization is that these meters allow selling PV production to other units/properties nearby (at least where the connection/current path doesn't actually go through grid operator owned wiring, e.g. units in an apartment building) without having to pay grid fees on that energy sale despite the energy going through the meters instead of being sold through a behind-the-meter bypass feed/line. That "virtual" metering of the hyper-local PV energy sale makes it just much easier in terms of infrastructure, compared to some actual real-time load-balancing setup that somehow spreads an apartment building's monolithic PV array's power across multiple units's behind-the-meter breakerboxes taking care to not wastefully oversupply any one as backfeed would at best be compensated at about a third of the all-fees-included retail rate (it's about the same as the grid fee part that's payable by non-local buyers of electricity, both around 10ct/kWh) instead of 1:1 compensating the approximately 30ct/kWh buy-rate of some local apartment's meter. Also, less active infrastructure at a scale that doesn't afford on-site 24/7 staffing for monitoring and customer-side-uptime-enhancing redundancy features is always good. I'm counting a mere meter that only meters and doesn't steer/control electricity as passive infrastructure from the power flow's POV. Especially if it's built to fail in a way where power still flows but the metering/counting is broken, at least where there's more than just yearly reporting from the meter (and thus non-metering would be caught quickly). Electricity uptime of this grade is something with perhaps underappreciated benefits: pretty much all but critical systems and those that run non-crash-safe software will not require a UPS, as power outages at least in urban areas (except those where local distribution systems drown in climate change flash flooding) happen once every few years, either due to larger-scale blackouts (entire city/metro/state) or from non-redundant local infrastructure dying of old age.
dredmorbius 1y ago
Except of course that they do: "Texas freeze raises concerns about ‘ridiculous’ variable rate bills" (2021) HOUSTON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - In Spring, Texas, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Houston, Akilah Scott-Amos is staring down a more than $11,000 electric bill for this month, a far cry from her $34 bill at this time last year. "What am I going to do?" Scott-Amos, 43, said. She was among the millions of Texas residents who lost power during several days of bitter cold that caused the state's electrical grid, operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to break down. "I guess the option is, what, I'll pay it? I just don't feel like we should have to." <https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-freeze-raises-concerns-about-ridiculous-variable-rate-bills-2021-02-23/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-freeze-raises-...> This instance involves variable rate billing systems, where the cost per unit use can vary tremendously. There are also stories you'll find where equipment issues (broken water or gas mains, malfunctioning electrical equipment, failure to terminate per-minute-billed telephone calls, etc.). I can remember the latter featuring in some compendium of records (possibly Guiness) for a family who hadn't realised that they needed to hang up the phone between calls and got hit with a staggering (at least for the time) bill. More recently, data and roaming charges tend to be culprits: <https://worthly.com/most-expensive/expensive-phone-bills-time/ https://worthly.com/most-expensive/expensive-phone-bills-tim...> In all of these cases, a significant problem is that usage is all but entirely divorced from metering, and people have no idea of what their actual usage patterns are until "invoice therapy" arrives. (A term I'm borrowing from a friend, though I'll note that monthly feedback cycles on what are typically hourly/daily decisionmaking patterns proves a poor systems control theory match.)
Nevermark 1y ago
People don't have stable or seasonal "token needs" or wants. Nor do they have stable don't-give-me-any-better "answer quality" expectations from models. At least not yet. AI model services don't have any version of the typical utility's geographical market protection or monopoly. Worse, they have all been funded for massive loss-leader hyper growth, so to survive in the short term, they have to compete on who can raise and lose more. Then looking into the long term, unlike the Uber's of the world, the point where a market will reach saturation, survivors finally "win", and margins can transition from negative to positive, keeps moving away. I don't see any way in which utility bills are economically comparable to this situation. The only "hope" the general AI service business has, is that at some point one of them pulls far enough ahead of the others that everyone else's economics collapse first. Like a very high speed version of the centralization in advanced chip fabs. But with no profitability until the centralization happens. Brutal.
marcus_holmes 1y ago
There is no "pay $25/month for unlimited electricity" option. And if there was, everyone would use that and all metered options would go broke overnight. Followed fairly shortly by the company offering unlimited flat-rate deals. Which is what TFA describes, and is why there is no unlimited flat-rate deal for utilities. But that's a mature market that is not relying on growth for valuations, and isn't appealing to VCs trained on net/mobile/crypto bubbles.
- portaouflop 1y ago
  I don’t know about you but where I live the electricity companies definitely offer a “flat rate” for electricity. But those contracts are so much more expensive that virtually no one gets them.
  - stavros 1y ago
    Where do you live that you can get a flat rate for unlimited electricity? I've never heard of this (I live in Greece).
    - sensanaty 1y ago
      Dunno if it counts because it's not unlimited usage for a flat rate, but in the Netherlands a lot of utilities like water, gas and electricity are billed at the same flat rate every month, then once a year they do a calculation and you get money back (or have to pay more if your usage was higher) based on actual usage. I can't see any situation where true unlimited usage for a flat rate, even a wildly expensive and uneconomical one, would make any sense because as often happens you'd basically be incentivizing people to waste as much gas, electricity and water as they possibly can to "get their money's worth" or whatever, and we should be encouraging the exact opposite for those 3 things.
      - stavros 1y ago
        I agree with you, that's why I can't believe it exists anywhere. What you mention is basically to reduce the costs of counting, and is still usage-based metering, just with a reasonable guess to make payment more frequent. Power in Greece works the same way, except you (are supposed to) get the guess one month and the count the next (and pay the difference). In practice, they count less often than that.
latexr 1y ago
Those utilities are fairly easy to track in a way that digital services aren’t. Lights in my home consume energy at a consistent rate. Ditto for water coming out of the faucet; if I open it more, I can see it moving more water and costing more. On the web, it’s not clear that one website is being massively more wasteful than another. From your perspective you’re engaging in the same behaviour (opening a website) but for reasons outside your control you may be spending more than intended. I remember not having unlimited internet traffic at home and always having to worry. These days, I pay a flat monthly fee for internet access.
pembrook 1y ago
Utilities are infra-as-a-service. The point is that infrastructure is non-optional, you're not going to decide not to use it, and you rarely switch (in the case of utilities you often CAN'T switch). You set it and forget it. AI in the context of an end-user product or tool is not that (unless you're running the AI product company, where it becomes infra for you). It's a blender or a kitchenaid mixer. Let's say companies gave those away for free but only charged metered fees to use them. If you had to pay $4 to blend something or run your mixer (and weren't sure if the tool would get it right the first time or you'd have to re-do it 5 times) you'd use them much less. They are optional. You'd treat the decision to bake like a financial one. Nobody asks their spouse if it's okay to take a shower.
nkrisc 1y ago
Imagine all your home appliances ran on magic instead of electricity, and you paid the magic company for each unit of magic used, except you had no idea how much magic each appliance needed to operate.

drak0n1c 1y ago

Venice AI has a solution where I stake their Base ERC20 token, and in exchange I get a proportional amount of free daily-refreshing API access to a variety of high-powered open source models, besides the staking yield and free Pro subscription level access to their webapp. It's great for free experimentation when coding apps that use API inference, it's actually motivating to build uses for it because it feels akin to a benefit that otherwise goes unused. Of course there is some price risk in holding their crypto token. After a large spike and drop in the first couple days, it's held steady for 6 months with a $2-$3 floor, possibly due to it having that baseline utility. Mentally, it's far more comfortable to me to stake a principal sum that I can wholly unstake in the future, than to spend on per-request fees.

DonHopkins 1y ago
[dead]