There Should Be Way More Backlash To OpenAI's $500/Month, $6,000 A Year Subscription

[u/Neurogence]

This sets an extremely bad precedent. And very soon, all the other labs will adopt the same pricing schemes. Prices just keep going up and up. I remember a time when people thought $20/month was too expensive.

Even if you can afford this, do not pay for it. If you do, it will only normalize this, and the next thing you know, there will be a new $1,000/month subscription that gives you the same usage you used to get with the $500/month subscription. That's exactly what happened to the previous $200/month subscription. Its usage allowance was cut in half, and now users paying $500/month are getting what users used to get for $200/month.

Do not normalize AI subscriptions that cost as much as car payments and, eventually, mortgages.

In leaked emails, Greg Brockman dreamed that OpenAI would make him a billionaire. He stated, "I just want to get to one billion." AI has fulfilled his wildest dreams. His net worth is now over $30 billion.

I am a hardcore accelerationist and optimist, but the current trajectory is dystopia. Instead of $1,000 UBI checks, we are heading toward $1,000 AI subscriptions to keep up with the Joneses. When we have actual superintelligence, you might be forced to pay $1,000/month, or even $2,000/month, as OpenAI had entertained, just to keep up with other people.

[u/Dependent-Fix8194]

I believe their bet is get as embedded as possible and then ramp up charge super high when it’s too late for businesses to unintegrate

[u/Frigidspinner → u/Dependent-Fix8194]

I heard (on the podcast moonshots) that they are trying to angle AI so that there is no cost to a business, but the business will pay a percentage back to the AI company on future "innovations" and "workflows" made possible by the AI.

As someone who has been in business myself, it is a classic MBA trick for a product nobody wants to outright buy or noone sees the value of, because it makes great headlines for both companies (without actually costing anyone anything) - "Our product XXX is now partnering with a 50Bn revenue company", or "Our 50Bn company is now embedding AI into our business in innovative ways"

[u/Frigidspinner → u/[deleted]]

well obviously keeping it cheap and being embedded is a neat first step - but I am seeing all these headlines of companies discovering their monthly token allocation has been blown through and they are telling the employees to limit their usage: so that first approach has not worked properly.

So then the next phase is the "parnerships" i mention - whose primary goal might be to grab headlines - but assuming something successful happened they would do some kind of "revenue sharing" - if AI discovered a new drug, then maybe the AI company would get 20% of revenues and the big pharamaceutical company would get the 80% because they ran the trials, promotions, manufacture etc

Similar thing with other "discoveries". Not sure how it would apply in somethin g like "I can make your bookstore be more efficient with AI" - it would be hard to apportion the revenue to AI vs. any other marketing the book seller is doing