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It goes a layer up, too. Harvey (legal AI) recently tweeted that a single user query cost that firm 26k USD. This, while they have thousands of users and report

by piker 24d ago

It goes a layer up, too. Harvey (legal AI) recently tweeted that a single user query cost that firm 26k USD. This, while they have thousands of users and reportedly whole law firms paying zero. That difference is being subsidized by billions of VC dollars.

toomuchtodo 24d ago
A bit of a collective action problem, but if everyone leverages this services as hard as they can without cost concern, better capital decisions will eventually be made. Like the Federal Reserve draining the M2 money supply, AI users must drain the capital supply of subsidized tokens. This pulls forward the future of "Does this tech have value at actual unsubsidized costs?" If it does, tremendous, if it doesn't, also a reasonable outcome to the grand experiment. The current pain comes from the valley of uncertainty we find ourselves in at the moment. > That difference is being subsidized by billions of VC dollars. "History never repeats itself, but it rhymes." -- Twain Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 - May 2020 (514 comments) > I cut this deal with my neighborhood Italian restaurant! I texted the owner about being miffed they hadn’t told me they were on DoorDash. He replied. They aren’t. We compared pricing, and found the prices advertised are way off from what the restaurant charges. So I placed a $5,000 order to the neighbourhood homeless shelter. DoorDash paid him over $20,000, and I get free pasta for the rest of the year. (My neighbours have also partaken.) Glad to know it’s scaling. SoftBank has assembled a unique concentration of stupidity for itself.
- piker 24d ago
  Yes, there are good examples of this working, anti-competitive as it may be. What if, in the DoorDash example, the pizza shop was itself venture backed and selling pizza at a loss to win customers and using this 20k revenue as a basis to raise money?
  - piker 24d ago
    What if the same VCs were backing both and gearing up for an IPO?
    - ethbr1 24d ago
      Once circular funding scales, VCs become the Fed.

by piker 24d ago

toomuchtodo 24d ago

A bit of a collective action problem, but if everyone leverages this services as hard as they can without cost concern, better capital decisions will eventually be made. Like the Federal Reserve draining the M2 money supply, AI users must drain the capital supply of subsidized tokens. This pulls forward the future of "Does this tech have value at actual unsubsidized costs?" If it does, tremendous, if it doesn't, also a reasonable outcome to the grand experiment. The current pain comes from the valley of uncertainty we find ourselves in at the moment. > That difference is being subsidized by billions of VC dollars. "History never repeats itself, but it rhymes." -- Twain Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 - May 2020 (514 comments) > I cut this deal with my neighborhood Italian restaurant! I texted the owner about being miffed they hadn’t told me they were on DoorDash. He replied. They aren’t. We compared pricing, and found the prices advertised are way off from what the restaurant charges. So I placed a $5,000 order to the neighbourhood homeless shelter. DoorDash paid him over $20,000, and I get free pasta for the rest of the year. (My neighbours have also partaken.) Glad to know it’s scaling. SoftBank has assembled a unique concentration of stupidity for itself.

piker 24d ago
Yes, there are good examples of this working, anti-competitive as it may be. What if, in the DoorDash example, the pizza shop was itself venture backed and selling pizza at a loss to win customers and using this 20k revenue as a basis to raise money?
- piker 24d ago
  What if the same VCs were backing both and gearing up for an IPO?
  - ethbr1 24d ago
    Once circular funding scales, VCs become the Fed.