The token consumption concern is real but I think the framing misses a key trend: specialized models for specific domains.

In legal tech, we run domain-specific models for contract review that use 90% fewer tokens than general-purpose LLMs because they understand legal document structure natively. The token cost per document dropped from dollars to cents.

The real "tokenpocalypse" is for use cases that try to do everything with one general model. As the ecosystem matures toward specialized tools (similar to how we got specialized IDEs for different programming languages), token efficiency improves dramatically.

The analogy holds: general-purpose models are like Swiss Army knives — useful but inefficient. Domain-specific models are like proper tools — more expensive upfront but vastly more efficient for their domain.