[ericmay]

> ? Claude, ChatGPT, etc are heinously expensive for tiny benefits lmao. Local + efficient is clearly the future

Corporate America is where the money is, and corporate America will dictate what products are successful by virtue of spend. Individuals aren't going to be paying $100s or $1000s/month en masse for these models but businesses will be. Being local and efficient isn't that important at this stage but even so as American companies continue to scale and invest they'll be able to make those models more local and efficient if the market wants it. Sort of like how you had a big, giant desktop computer and now you've got a super computer in your phone which is in your pocket. Going straight to "local and efficient" means going straight to being behind because at some point, perhaps now even, the local and efficient model won't be able to keep up.

For some reason people think that they somehow know something that Google or Nvidia or whoever, with hundreds of billions of dollars of real money at stake don't already know and it's both amusing and bizarre to see this play out again and again in off-hand comments like "lol tiny benefits".

You buy an iPhone even though the cheap-o Wal-Mart Android phone for $100 "does the same thing". Except that in this case the Android phone just puts you out of business while those spending big money for "tiny benefits" beat you in the market.

[ForHackernews]

> You buy an iPhone even though the cheap-o Wal-Mart Android phone for $100 "does the same thing".

People buy iPhones because of status signalling and network effects, neither of which appears to apply to AI model choice. LLMs are already rapidly on the way to being interchangeable commodities.

[ericmay]

No they don't, it's not 2008. Anybody off the street can get an iPhone or a free iPhone with a mobile plan. They're commodity products. Even homeless people have them.

To the extent LLMs are commodity products you're right (so far), but that is limited to the main model providers, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, &c. with interoperability on cloud platform providers and other technology providers like an Apple offering you a choice of LLM with Siri or something.

If you want to suggest that some other model is in the same bucket as those primary 3, it goes back to the crappy, cheap phone analogy which is accurate. Yea you can make calls with it, but you make calls better with an iPhone.

[ForHackernews]

Ironically you are participating in the social signalling ("crappy, cheap phone") phenomenon you claim doesn't exist.

https://mashable.com/article/apple-messages-green-doj

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-green-bubble-messa...

[ericmay]

Ok just remove "crappy" then and replace with low-quality. We can differentiate on low-quality, high-quality, and more when talking about consumer products.

I'm going off of rough memory here, but don't like half of all Americans have an iPhone? Do half of all Americans own a Porsche?

[ForHackernews]

Fine, if you don't like the iPhone analogy then look at Coca-Cola vs store brand Super Cola. They are both brown sugar water, but Coke is Coke. People buy Coke because of the brand, the image and (maybe a little bit) because of the taste.

There is no equivalent in LLM land. AI models are not like Coke vs Other Cola. AI is like electricity or water, a generic commodity with minimal cost or friction to switching. I can flip the VSCode plugin between a dozen different models a day.

[ericmay]

> They are both brown sugar water,

> AI is like electricity or water, a generic commodity with minimal cost or friction to switching. I can flip the VSCode plugin between a dozen different models a day.

I don't think that's the case, and as companies continue to build out AI products we will move more into opinionated workflows and different vendor design patterns precisely because the model you suggest will result in a race to the bottom which is the opposite of the intended business model.

[throwaway27448]

> free iPhone with a mobile plan

I get your point but in what sense is that "free"? What mobile plan giving you an iphone doesn't come with explicit debt?

[ericmay]

Here's an example from 2025 with a major US carrier - Verizon: https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/deals/articles/want-free-iphon...

They run various schemes like this all the time, you can also trade in your existing phone a lot of times for pretty favorable terms. I've traded in phones that were a few years old and gotten $1000+ for them, especially when switching providers.

[vel0city]

Verizon's "free" iPhone deal is you pay for the phone up front and then receive a bill credit. Here's the fine print from one of those deals:

$729.99 purchase on device payment or at retail price required. New line req'd. Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Ultimate plans required. Less $730 promo credit applied to account over 36 mos; promo credit ends if eligibility requirements are no longer met; 0% APR.Taxes & fees may apply. Credits will appear on your Verizon Wireless bill.

https://www.verizon.com/shop/online/free-5g-phones/

[ericmay]

I don’t know or care much about the specific details but the article was written in 2025. Carriers run deals and give away iPhones or close enough to free or cheap that quibbling about the details is irrelevant.

If you think the iPhone is a status symbol you’re just wrong.

[throwaway27448]

That's not free except at point of sale.

[ericmay]

It’s free enough that my point stands and I’m close-minded to any further discussion about it.

[throwaway27448]

Corporate america is the past. Momentum is carrying capital out of the country. Pay attention to rate of change.

[ericmay]

What source are you using for your claim that capital is flowing out of the country? I'm curious to read more about it.

[throwaway27448]

I don't think that's a particularly bold claim after thirty straight years of moving supply chains overseas. Capital is, inherently, the means of production. The world where we could compete is gone.

[ericmay]

Capital is not the means of production. Capital is capital. If I have a few million dollars in my bank account I don’t all of a sudden have a factory. Remember from economics class you need capital, labor, and the means of production.

Capital inflows are different from manufacturing outflows. The US has historically imported capital which is part of why we have such a large trade imbalance. I’d encourage you to do some more digging here.

> The world where we could compete is gone.

Sigh no that’s just not true at all. We compete hard and fast all day everyday, economy is growing and will continue to do so, and no amount of leftist doomer, Chinese, Iranian, or Russian propaganda changes those facts.

[throwaway27448]

> I have a few million dollars in my bank account I don’t all of a sudden have a factory.

No but money only has value because of a product of the human labor and production capacity it refers to. Money is not capital, it is a reference to/legal coercion of capital

> We compete hard and fast all day everyday

Sir have you ever been to the us? Lmao. We are only competitive in the industry of white collar work (financial/artisanal services), an industry that capital is actively gutting

[ericmay]

> No but money only has value because of a product of the human labor and production capacity it refers to. Money is not capital, it is a reference to/legal coercion of capital

These are just strings of words without meaning or importance.

> Sir have you ever been to the us? Lmao. We are only competitive in the industry of white collar work (financial/artisanal services), an industry that capital is actively gutting

Yes, I live here. Why are you posting obviously untrue and asinine statements like this? Go look at the Fortune 500. There ya go. What other evidence do you need? And not only are you writing dumb things here, your original post was wrong too! Please get off of social media or whatever doomscrolling news you are partaking in because it is bad for your health and perception of reality. The United States by any measure, as a matter of indisputable fact, a highly competitive and dynamic economy across pretty much all sectors. This is not up for debate.