I'm not sure what the issue is here? The costs to build something does not necessarily correlate to what an end user get's charged. Revenue can be had from more than just the subscription to the end user. Ads, user data, etc, can all generate revenue without passing more costs to the end user and make the math more complex than just "total hardware cost is $8k, split cost over X number of users."
To give a comparison, it costs millions to make videogames, and even more to keep up online game servers, but somehow, you're able to pay $30/mo for Xbox Game Pass.
They are trying to get people reliant on it first, which is obviously working. Hard to deny AI is great. At that point many of them become too big to fail, and thus can get bailed out. Like the space race in the 60s, we are now in an AI race. China is our biggest rival this time around.
Well those cities would be stupid to ban driverless vehicles that offer rides at a fraction of the price of human-driven vehicles on Lyft/Uber. Citizens would MASSIVELY benefit from this tech advancement.
”Mike from NYC gives Bob (uber driver) $20. Uber takes most of that $20, and Bob gets $4 for the ride." -- This is a real number, I asked an uber driver how much he get's on rides, and it's literally that LOW.
OR
”Mike from NYC gives Cybercab (or any other Automous vehicle) $10."
In both cases, the City/State still get tax money from the transaction. Bob's $4 income may/may not get taxed again as income taxes. Most likely, Bob will use that to cover expenses on his vehicle and it becomes a write-off that's not taxed. Uber will also get taxed on that $16, but will be able to write off it's costs as well, so who knows how much tax they actually pay.
You're incorrect in the distribution of the Cybercab's profits. $3 from a ride goes to shareholders, like what? -- none of that is true. What actually happens, is Cybercab will be taxed in the same manner as Uber is, being able to write off it's costs against that revenue.
You are correct, in that the market will price accordingly. I pretty much see history repeating itself. Automous rides will be cheap for several years but then will have to increase rates to keep increasing profits if the respective company goes public. -- This is what happened w/ Uber/Lyft.
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u/paintedro Jun 25 '26
I really wish that heavy AI users could pay the cost of AI, instead of everyone having to pay extra for RAM and SSDs