[hn_throwaway_99]

Literally every VC funded consumer product has switched from a "growth at all costs" phase to a "Now we hike prices, make money, and generally enshittify" phase, and tons of those companies are still around (e.g. Uber), so I'm not sure why anyone thinks it would be much different for AI.

[lelanthran]

Those companies at least had somewhat of a moat.

As I see it, the only thing close to a moat is CC for Anthropic, and since it is a big ol' fucking mess that is a) apparently now beyond the ability of any current SOTA LLM to fix, and b) understood by absolutely no human, I'd say it's not much of a moat. The other agents will catch up sooner rather than later.

The other providers? I don't see a moat. We jump ship at the drop of a hat.

[cyanydeez]

yes, but how many succeed without any kind of moat or having destroyed the existing companies?

I'm still running local LLMs and finding perfectly acceptable code gen.

[operatingthetan]

I think the situation we'll end up in is having closed models that are fast and near perfect but expensive, and a lot of cheap open-source models that are good enough for most people.

[aurareturn]

No moat --> It's basically OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic left at the SOTA. Maybe soon, we'll have 2 left.

[lelanthran]

> No moat --> It's basically OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic left at the SOTA. Maybe soon, we'll have 2 left.

Yeah, but do we even need them? Non-SOTA is still pretty damn good; remember last year, pre-SOTA? How many people were boasting 10x - 100x productivity increases using the end-2025 models?

So the non-sota models support doing 10 hours of work in 1 hour. Many people would be fine with that. Fine enough that they aren't going to spring for a SOTA model that cuts the 10 hours to 0.5 hours, they're just going to use the cheap models to cut the 10 hours down to 1 hour.

[aurareturn]

Despite this, OpenAI and Anthropic and Google can't keep up with demand. That should tell you about what people want.

[cyanydeez]

Ok, ok, so they can't keep up with "Demand". Now lets go parse what that demand is:

Is it: We want to use this to "Kill a bunch of people"

Is it: I'm very lonely, and need something to tell me suicide is ok

Is it: Google is so filled with ads, I'm just going to ask the LLM what to buy

Is it: A useful coding tool to improve work flow towards end products.

Cause, if we ignore ethics, some of that demand will generate revenue to pay for it's existence; the others will do nothing of the sort.

Just because there's demand doesn't mean that demand equates to the value of the product. There's lots of demand for LED light bulbs, but once those light bulbs are sold, that demand disappears into the night. This isn't an analogy of AI, but to demonstrate you can't just wave your hands and say "demand leads to a sustainable business model".

[lelanthran]

> Despite this, OpenAI and Anthropic and Google can't keep up with demand.

Yeah, see, if I was selling $5 for 1$, I probably wouldn't be able to keep up with demand either.

There's a reason all the mainstream token providers have been tightening the pricing screws this year.

[bornfreddy]

Which ones, if you don't mind sharing?