7 ms·

Lots of us have noticed that usage limits for Claude have been nerfed in recent weeks/months. If anything, these new multipliers are more transparent than anyt

• dualvariable 6mo ago
  However, inference costs for entirely good enough models are likely to keep declining in the future. We're probably hitting diminishing returns on model size and training. The new generations aren't quantum leaps anymore, and newer generations of open source models like DeepSeek are likely to start getting good enough. There's going to be a limit to how much they can raise prices, because someone can always build out a datacenter and fill it up with open source DeepSeek inference and undercut your prices by 10x while still making a very good ROI--and that's a business model right there. Right now I'm sure there's a lot of people who will protest that they couldn't do their jobs with lesser models, but as time goes on that will get less and less. Already right now the consumers who are using AI for writing presentations, cooking recipe generation and ELI5 answers for common things, aren't going to be missing much from a lesser model. That'll actually only start to get cheaper over time. Also for business needs, as AI inference costs escalate there comes a point where businesses rediscover human intelligence again, and start hiring/training people to do more work to use lesser models--if that is more productive in the end than shelling out large amounts of cash for inference on the latest models. [Although given how much companies waste on AWS, there's a lot of tolerance for overspending in corporations...]
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 6mo ago
    I hope it's true, but right now hardware prices are insane
  • croes 6mo ago
    I guess the new models will still be quantum leaps, but literally: "The smallest possible change in a system"
    • ctoth 6mo ago
      Yups... Mythos is the smallest possible leap. Not a standard model generation advance, not even a version point advance. Just the smallest possible quanta of a change. We are absolutely hitting a plateau any day now. Any day. Any time. Any second now. Yup. Right now! Surely!
      • cubefox 6mo ago
        Yeah. AI progress is insanely fast if you compare it to anything else. Where else is a one year old technology already hopelessly outdated? 10 years ago is basically stone age.
        • madamelic 6mo ago
          I am continually tripped out by the fact when I was 16, I didn't have a 'smartphone' beyond a Windows Mobile 6 phone that had no internet on it. Now, I have this high-resolution shiny object that can near instantaneously get any information I want along with _streaming HD video to it_ *anywhere*. 15 years even feels like a stone age. I can't fathom what it has to feel like people in their 60s and 70s.
          • nonameiguess 6mo ago
            I'm not quite 60, but it's always interesting to me that I feel quite the opposite of this. When I was 16, I didn't have a computer, didn't have a phone, had never used the Internet, but when I think of how life has changed, it's frankly not much. I woke up this morning, scooped my cats' litter boxes, took out some trash, made myself breakfast, ate that, read some news while eating, then lifted weights in my garage, had some work meetings, wrote up some instructions per a customer request from Friday, and am about to go drive to the lake to go do a 9 mile longboard loop. That's very close to a normal day in 1996. The biggest difference is I read the news on my phone instead of a physical newspaper. The news was not any more interesting or informative because of that. I guess I can also still do the loop reasonably well, but I'm a lot slower than I was in 1996 when I was a cross-country state champion. My parents are closing in on 70 and I guess I can't speak for them, but I'm at least aware of the daily routines of their lives, too. Walk the dog, do housework, DIY building projects, visit kids and grankids. Seems much the same, too, with the biggest difference being they're now teaching my sister's sons to play baseball rather than me, but shit, one of her sons even looks like exactly the same way I looked when I was 7! The more things change, the more they stay the same.
• hirako2000 6mo ago
  It does feel like the music is about to stop. It has been years now, of cash injections, investors can't keep feeding the beast forever.
  • ctoth 6mo ago
    It has been years now of reading this same comment... Surely people can't keep typing it forever.
    • stuartq 6mo ago
      But the prices haven't been going up by multiples of 6 for the past few years. Things are actually changing now. I don't think it's over, but in the short term, it's going to be considerably more expensive.
      • hirako2000 6mo ago
        They will smooth up the spike. Or be subtle and transform the existing quota so that they run out more quickly. Calling it caching, compression, optimisation, of course for the sacred benefit of the users. That would be, even is, the smart thing to do.
      • Applejinx 6mo ago
        And it didn't really get flawless, did it? All the same objections stand, but the cost is inevitably blowing up for the same kinda jank product.
    • tclancy 6mo ago
      I’m not willing too, but I can set up a cron job to Claude -p the task.
    • soraisdead 6mo ago
      The difference is we're now in a world where Disney has pulled out of OpenAI without comming, and Sora was dropped off a ditch. In other words. The bubble has burst. You're just in denial.
• bluescrn 6mo ago
  Did anyone really expect AI to be cheap? If/when it gets to the point where it can replace a skilled worker, the service can be sold for close to the same price as that skilled labour. But the AI can run 24/7, reliably, and scale up/down at a moments notice. There's not going to be much competition to drive prices down, the barriers to entry are already huge. There'll likely to be one clear winner, becoming a near-monopoly, or maybe we'll get a duopoly at best.
  • flir 6mo ago
    I do. "Commoditize your complement". Want to sell lots of silicon? Give away good local models to run on that silicon. Even if SOTA models in the cloud are a few percentage points better, most work can be routed to local models most of the time. That leaves the cloud providers fighting over the most computationally intensive tasks. In the long term, I think models are going to be local-first. (Unless providers can figure out a network effect that local models can't replicate).
    • vanviegen 6mo ago
      > In the long term, I think models are going to be local-first. Why? There's an inherent efficiency advantage to scale, while the only real advantage for local models (privacy/secrecy) hasn't proven convincing for broader IT either.
      • solid_fuel 6mo ago
        Local first models aren't just more private than the API vendors, they also have the advantages of fixed cost, lower latency, and better stability - local models don't get nerfed/"updated" in the background like chatgpt does. Maybe in a world where these AI companies behaved with some semblance of ethics and user-friendliness they would be on even ground, but for anyone paying attention local models are obviously the future.
      • LtWorf 6mo ago
        To not depend on an external company that can decide the price.
• stefan_ 6mo ago
  Dunno, if in this day and age you are making inference more expensive, more scarce, you are honestly moving in the wrong direction and DeepSeek and others will gladly take your lunch.
  • Gigachad 6mo ago
    The hardware to run deepseek is still incredibly expensive.
    • cheema33 6mo ago
      > The hardware to run deepseek is still incredibly expensive. Deepseek API pricing is very low compared to Anthropic/OpenAI API pricing. For many, the 300% difference in pricing may be difficult to justify, if the quality difference is very small. And there will be many tasks where the most expensive/the best model, is not needed. Currently many people end up using Opus 4.7/GPT 5.5 for many tasks without thinking about it.
      • Gigachad 6mo ago
        Is deepseek still on subsidized pricing though.
        • nl 6mo ago
          Judging by the multiple providers selling it for around the same price (including non-VC funded competitors): no, it isn't subsidized.
          • johndough 6mo ago
            Is there somewhere I can look up whether a certain provider is VC-funded?
            • 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
              It's not really about that. China is eating the US's lunch when it comes to ai. Don't get me wrong opus is the strongest model out there today, but that's the us's only advantage right now. Deepseek,qwen,kimi, etc all have fundamental research making the models smaller, more efficient, scalable, etc. in the US the plan is to buy all the hardware, write legislature, embargo other countries, keep models and research closed, so people cannot innovate for the next two to five years. Unlike the us chinas focus is on research and sustainable building. China also has really good infrastructure for energy, etc. it is also to their advantage to drop 5 billion instead of 2 trillion and beat the us while turning a profit. Chinas focus in ai is less flashy and because they are the biggest manufacturing super power in the world right now, it directly feeds their economy. They aren't looking for applications or to replace thought workers with slop bots, they have natural needs for this technology. Us manufacturers can't compete so they have to keep companies from selling their goods there see byd. China sees it as commoditizing their complement, the us is risking its entire economy and it's environment and resources, kind of scary.
• glicvdfhsdf 6mo ago
  [dead]
• sergiotapia 6mo ago
  That is folly because there is very minimal cost to switching providers, let alone models.