alt Hacker NewsAs a TCS assistant professor from Eastern Europe, I always am a little jealous of the biggest names in math having such an easy access to the expensive, long thinking models.
Paying for Pro from any of my current academic budgets is completely ouf of the field of reality here -- all budgets tend to have restricted uses and software payments fit into very few categories. Effectively, I'd have to ask for a brand new grant and hope the grant rules allow for large software payments and I won't encounter an anti-AI reviewer; such a thing would take one year at least.
As a nail to the coffin, I was "denied" all Claude Opus recently as part of Microsoft's clampdown on individual (and academic) use of Copilot.
(Chagpt 5.5 Plus does not seem sufficient for any deeper investigations into new research topics, I've tried.)
Apologies for the rant.
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At my university, everyone had to pay their AI subscriptions out of their own pocket, until a communal AI service was introduced recently. It took 2 years to set up and only serves gpt-oss-120b, so everyone is still using other services. But at least some admin can scatter the word "AI" all over the university's website now and has an excuse to reject any requests for AI subscriptions because "we already have AI".
It’s a classic example of the best positioned people being in the best position to keep reaping all the rewards.
There’s the example of a poor person and a rich person buying boots. The poor person’s boots wear out and have to be replaced while the rich persons boots last for many years due to higher quality craftsmanship. Over years, the poor person’s boots wear will pay may for boots.
OpenRouter lets you pay by the token only (no subscription), has all the frontier models (including Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5) and most of the others, and if you use it sparingly it usually turns out to be quite cheap.
I believe ChatGPT 5.5 Pro access is available for $100/month, is that an unrealistic level of expense for someone in your position and geography? Even if the university won't pay for it, it seems you'd like to use this tool for your own goals.
I'm not trying to shame here, just curious whether this is completely unattainable for most researchers in your area.
I fully understand your rant! I pay ~20€/month for the Pro account, as my university has a deal with Microsoft and only seems to recognize Copilot, so it’s very hard to use one own’s funding for paying something else.
Paste what you want me to ask 5.5 Pro and I'll paste you the response.
@NotOscarWilde drop your email here, I will reach out and happy to get you a pro account for a few months so you can try 5.5 pro.(work at OAI)