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by altruios 15 days ago
> If I had been paying API pricing it would have been $2,180.16

The point being made above is that API pricing is calculated... somehow... seemingly arbitrarily. Possibly untethered to the infrastructure costs entirely: which would be the basis of any 'value', however that holds the labor theory of value, which isn't accurate either. So how do you accurately price these tokens at all (other than through price-discovery: which is slow, messy and fuzzy)?
2 comments
NitpickLawyer 15 days ago
> So how do you accurately price these tokens at all

Like anything else in the economy: at the point where enough customers can pay you, and not enough will go to the cheaper competition.

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altruios 15 days ago
> at the point where enough customers can pay you

> (other than through price-discovery: which is slow, messy and fuzzy)

I notice a distinct lack of reading or comprehension (from everyone around me now, not just this comment) which worries me. I worry if LLM's are to blame. No one reads anymore...

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no-name-here 15 days ago
I imagine a number of Hacker News members might be devs that haven't dealt with terms like “price discovery” before, so we should all try to show grace.
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altruios 14 days ago
My apologies. I was taught that term in 7th grade econ. I assumed it was common vernacular.
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no-name-here 13 days ago
Even among college graduates, only 17% could correctly answer a basic econ question (pre-AI) [1].

I looked up one ~1,000 page econ textbook, and it does not seem to mention price "discovery", or at least the only uses of the word "discovery" were about things like a scientific/oil discovery [2].

"Even high-achieving students demonstrate relatively lower understanding of economics compared with other subjects." [1]

[1] https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/why-americans-flunk-...

[2] https://assets.openstax.org/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/pr...

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lbreakjai 15 days ago
I don't really understand the holdup about that specific line? Anthropic publishes the cost per million of tokens, what's arbitrary about looking at your consumption, and doing the math?

Or are you saying that Anthropic is determining that cost per million arbitrarily?

If so, it'd be like asking to explain why things fall on the ground other than through gravity. Companies pick the price they think the market will bear, and adjust based on new information.

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