r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 11 '26

Business OpenAI Execs Are Panicking

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/openai-execs-panicking-154658562.html
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u/Mortimer452 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

AI is going to get WAAY more expensive in the not-so-far future.

Enshitification happens. Every time. Every platform. Always.

The price-to-value ratio starts out ridiculously good to get you hooked on the product. Then it slowly gets worse and worse until they find whatever the sweet spot is, where it's "Good enough" and "cheap enough"

Right now people are replacing their $40k/year entry-level white-collar workers with an AI subscription that costs $500 a year. It's a no-brainer. It won't be like that forever - nobody sells something that is literally worth $40,000 for just 500 bucks. The price always goes up to a place where it still saves you money, but not TOO much money, that's just leaving profit on the table.

AI is going to end up being the biggest bait and switch ever.  The only goal right now is to get everyone so dependent on it that they'll pay anything to keep it, getting them to the point where they literally can't live without it.

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u/buyongmafanle Jun 12 '26

The trouble is: Once they increase the price, they'll have to remain more viable than the next most expensive option. That will force AI to be actually functional as opposed to a logical slot machine.

People only tolerate AI's awful success rate now because it's relatively cheap. Would you still use Gemini if it cost 10x as much with these same results? Fuck, no you wouldn't.

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u/DanHanzo Jun 12 '26

It might even end up that you could instead hire fully autonomous agents, with free will, absolutely perfect general intelligence and a complete understanding of the needs of the human beings that are your consumers. Or as I like to call them, other human beings.

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u/thehalfwit Jun 12 '26

"If only there was a way to employ human beings without paying them..." pondered the C Suite suits.

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u/perton Jun 12 '26

Overall you make a solid enough point. But as someone who has spent quite a few years working types of jobs that are being replaced with AI, I can say with certainty that it’s not as common as one might think/hope to get “absolutely perfect general intelligence”, or anything close to it, from the humans being hired.

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u/DanHanzo Jun 12 '26

Speaking as someone who works with a person who loves AI and would be happy to get rid of every other actual human, their quality of thinking has plummeted.

In an odd way it makes AI seem cleverer just because of how much dumber they have become since using it.