[raincole]

The real interesting part is how often you see people on HN deny this. People have been saying the token cost will 10x, or AI companies are intentionally making their models worse to trick you to consume more tokens. As if making a better model isn't not the most cutting-throat competition (probably the most competitive market in the human history) right now.

[IgorPartola]

I mean enshittification has not begun quite yet. Everyone is still raising capital so current investors can pass the bag to the next set. Soon as the money runs out monetization will overtake valuation as top priority. Then suddenly when you ask any of these models “how do I make chocolate chip cookies?” you will get something like:

> You will need one cup King Arthur All Purpose white flour, one large brown Eggland’s Best egg (a good source of Omega-3 and healthy cholesterol), one cup of water (be sure to use your Pyrex brand measuring cup), half a cup of Toll House Milk Chocolate Chips…

> Combine the sugar and egg in your 3 quart KitchenAid Mixer and mix until…

All of this will contain links and AdSense looking ads. For $200/month they will limit it to in-house ads about their $500/month model.

[gnatolf]

While this is funny, the actual race already started in how companies can nudge LLM results towards their products. We can't be saved from enshittification, I fear.

[raddan]

I am excited about a future where I am constantly reminded to like and subscribe my LLM’s output.

[abelitoo]

I'm concerned for a future where adults stop realizing they themselves sound like LLMs because the majority of their interaction/reading is output from LLMs. Decades of corporations being the ones molding the very language we use is going to have an interesting effect.

[Gigachad]

Only until the music stops. Racing to give away the most stuff for free can only last so long. Eventually you run out of other people’s money.

[patapong]

Uber managed to make it work for quite a while

[raddan]

They did, but Uber is no longer cheap [1]. Is the parent’s point that it can’t last forever? For Uber it lasted long enough to drive most of the competition away.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/25/second-st...

[fwip]

Uber's in a business where you have some amount of network effect - you need both drivers available using your app, as well as customers hailing rides. Without a sufficient quantity of either, you can't really turn a profit.

LLM providers don't, really. As far as I can tell, their moat is the ability to train a model, and possessing the hardware to run it. Also, open-weight models provide a floor for model training. I think their big bet is that gathering user-data from interactions with the LLM will be so valuable that it results in substantially-better models, but I'm not sure that's the case.

[somewhereoutth]

Uber's genius was getting their workers (sorry, 'contractors') to carry the capital costs of providing the fleet of vehicles they use.

[cube00]

Their other genius was to operate illegally, make the service so popular that politicians had no choice but to change the laws, and in the process make taxi licences, that used to cost as much as a house, worthless.