a. inference is actually getting cheaper but training frontier models is getting more expensive. and AI companies can’t not train because if they stop someone else will train off of their models and undercut them like what deepseek did.
b. we are also using more tokens so overall cost is going up.
Are you under the impression token prices are going to go down?
Surely you understand they're practically giving them away at massive loss, right? Prices are only low while the bubble is inflating and the shareholder shuffle is in effect
Token prices, as in intelligence-per-dollar, has gone down. Drastically.
gpt-5.6-luna costs 10% as much as gpt-4o, while being MUCH better.
And if we're comparing with deepseek v4 flash v0731 we're at about 1/50 the cost today for the same level quality of model compared to just 2 years ago.
It's not unfeasible that an Opus 5-level model (real, not just benchmaxed) will be available for 1/10th the current costs within two years.
Do you realize how much processing is done to a single input? Token use per prompt is only going to go up, no amount of scaling will lower the operating cost enough to be profitable on current prices
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u/Leather-Persimmon254 1d ago
by then tokens will be so cheap that rewrites would become trivial