5 ms·
Continued hardware improvements really make it hard for me to believe token prices will not continue to plummet.
by anthonypasq 1mo ago
Continued hardware improvements really make it hard for me to believe token prices will not continue to plummet.
- datakan 1mo agoToken prices coming down means nothing if the models keep wasting them
- gwerbin 1mo agoHopefully this also means billionaires can stop trying to drop data centers into residential neighborhoods with zero noise control and polluting on-site generators, signing local politicians on with NDAs, calling for eminent domain to seize homes to build power lines to data centers, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention the water use controversy. Token prices plummeting is probably a good thing, but not without the regulatory backstops that prevent these effectively industrial facilities from being operated with no regard for the externalities they impose on people who live near them.
- tmp10423288442 1mo agoNah, Jevon’s Paradox says that cheaper tokens will mean increased overall energy consumption. If we can’t even build data centers, the least disruptive industrial use possible, there’s no hope to reindustrialize the US or anywhere outside of China.
- gwerbin 1mo agoWe already had plenty of data centers in the US before the AI boom that weren't severely harmful to their neighbors. Cutting red tape is not the same as eliminating meaningful regulation. There are plenty of old industrial sites that could be repurposed as data centers. It turns out it's cheaper to bribe some small town government to give you a tax cut and discounted electricity and water rate.
- vlyan 1mo ago>polluting on-site generators how much pollution do you believe modern gas-turbine engines to produce? >Not to mention the water use controversy. what percentage of US water usage do you believe is by AI data centers?
- gwerbin 1mo agoReducing everything to national aggregates provides no insight into the strong negative externalities, imposed on the immediate surrounding communities, of unregulated industrial facilities. That's literally the reason we have zoning laws in the first place,
- dgellow 1mo agoThere is just so much downward pressure on token price, from every direction. We would need a completely new understanding of economics to explain why the price shouldn’t go down. Or market collusion/regulatory manipulation.
- simianwords 1mo agoThe price has been going down for ages, its not clear what you are pointing at
- phoghed 1mo agoPointing at the nay sayers who say tokens are heavily subsidized and it’s all going to come crashing down soon, surely any moment now
- dgellow 1mo agoI mean, it will obviously crash at some point. With so much pressure on token price to go down that means way less opportunity for margin for AI providers. OpenAI is in a pretty bad situation
- simianwords 1mo agoWhat does this have to do with margins? It can remain the same once prices go down
- dgellow 1mo agoAt the price going down? And that it will continue to go down, even if the hardware improvements stop. Not sure what isn’t clear
- dumberquestions 1mo agoThe demand for them is growing _per person_, not just across the wider economy, if tokens cost half as much but you want to use 3 times as much you're going to have to pay more.
- mathisfun123 1mo agothis is a story about a proprietary accelerator being built/designed by a token provider. and you think they're going to return the efficiency gains to the customer instead of capture the value for themselves? interesting take.
- simianwords 1mo agoYes, I can bet on this happening. If anything, this is a net gain for consumers as it is a competitive market.
- mathisfun123 1mo agogo ahead and bet: alibaba is a publicly traded company
- spacephysics 1mo agoWe should be mindful of the context that many of these providers VERY likely have been selling their subscriptions at a substantial loss So as much as i agree “more profits to stakeholders screw the customer”, i think its more of an emergency to get to profitability before the music stops.
- anthonypasq 1mo ago> We should be mindful of the context that many of these providers VERY likely have been selling their subscriptions at a substantial loss. what makes you think this?
- RealityVoid 1mo agoBecause everyone keeps saying this so it must be true. Real "it is known" kind of vibe with these statements.
- polski-g 1mo agoHe's a subscription truther. There's loads of them. OpenAI's profit increases with each subscription that is cancelled. Pretty soon they'll have more profit than God.
- ilaksh 1mo agoYeah but is it really even as good as Rubin? Seems just competitive.
- jrflo 1mo agoThis may just be a classic case of Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox In short, better hardware will drive down token cost in the near-term, but will drive up the demand for tokens as it gets cheap enough for other sectors to start to use it heavily. It comes from steam engines where economists originally thought that coal demand would plummet with more efficient engines, but it actually just meant that we found more uses for steam engines.
- kilroy123 1mo agoThis is exactly what I see happening now. Codex keeps doing these usage resets. What do I do? Burn even more tokens than ever before. I know I'm not the only one.
- CapsAdmin 1mo agoIs this a normal thing now? I remember seeing this talked about as a surprising thing, but now I'm seeing posts about this as if it's normal. (I switched to using local models as usage limits, api instability and the concept of paying per token stresses me out)
- anthonypasq 1mo agothe total cost spent on tokens may go up, but i just cant imagine per token costs going up
- jrflo 1mo agoDepends on compute capacity. If we become supply constrained on tokens, then prices will necessarily go up.
- anthonypasq 1mo agono they dont because inference stacks are getting more efficient and models are getting more intelligent per parameter.
- m101 1mo agoWith the corollary that old hardware valuations will plummet with them. Although given we have marginal pricing we need to push through to those lower prices in the face of increasing demand, so timing of this is uncertain and the key to the AI financial markets
- nimchimpsky 1mo ago[dead]
- stymaar 1mo ago> continue to plummet. Continue what? The cost per output token has kept going up for the past three years across the board, as thinking models keep leaning more on test-time scaling. The quality of the said output tokens obviously increased, and arguably increased more than their price, but the price still went up. Or, on the flip side, the price of combined tokens went down (a bit, it did not "plummet" at all though) but so did the average token quality if you count thinking tokens.
- fg137 1mo agoCounter point: Many AWS services barely decreased their prices (if at all) in the past decade despite advancement in hardware