alt Hacker NewsWhat about people who are running open models on their own GPUs? They are being subsidised too?
That's the point gp was making. If the big labs all increase prices 10x, the cost of running your own open models stays the same
Replies
You're assuming that people will be able to buy GPUs in the future. Which currently isn't the case and there is no timeline when they will be available again (at their pre-AI affordable price). I wouldn't be surprised if the labs keep buying up all the GPU capacity forever just to keep home models at bay (which I'm sure is what they're currently doing with all computer hardware).
How long are those models going to be safe to operate with internet access and tool use without ever being updated? Imagine if "do it for my grandma" is still as effective today because the models haven't changed and that every open-source maintainer upset with AI started polluting their libraries' logs with prompts that have been proven to work with no known reliable fix ever coming in this hypothetical future.
Sure, open models will definitely be an alternative once the frontier models hike prices to match costs. But that will be a minority, and people will start to switch, but people use the frontier models for a reason and these AI labs will extort that, once the easy investor money dries up.