That's an interesting perspective. Do you know if the deal with Anthropic has an exclusivity provision? In theory, you don't have to "switch," you could just ADD an OpenAI subscription and start splitting your spend (or…
I suspect any intelligence powerful enough to pull this off would quickly realize that it had no use for the oligarchs, perhaps even more quickly than the oligarchs realize they have no use for us.
I'm quibbling that Anthropic has loss leaders and that its profit leaders are extremely unstable. Imagine if there were three Chinese club stores in the same shopping plaza as the Costco. Sure, the regular Costco has…
Your question gets to the heart of who or what a company "is." If you don't pay dividends to your shareholders, what are you doing with all of your profits? I suppose they could just tell their investors to pound sand…
That's a fair point. Maybe the subsidies aren't as relevant as I suspected. Thanks for the insight.
Approximately 80% of revenue comes from consumption-based spending, so your statement would likely be true even if subscriptions were priced below cost. Overall revenue is not especially informative on the price…
I disagree that it only matters if the subsidy results in selling at a loss. Yes, some revenue is better than no revenue. But clearly the demand exists for consumption-based tokens. At its current growth rate, Anthropic…
To the extent they are representing that Claude is potentially sentient, there could be some VERY interesting principal-agent theories (agent in the traditional legal sense) that need to be ironed out to determine…
Subscriptions are heavily subsidized. 80% of their revenue comes from consumption-based pricing, which is not heavily subsidized (and probably not subsidized at all). The trouble is that this revenue is not especially…
About a quarter of Anthropic's revenue for the nine months ended 9/30/26 came from just five customers. That's not an absurd concentration, but I would be very interested to know who they are and how mobile their…
>You can rent your own GPU and make money if your electricity is cheap enough. I would be curious to know whether you'd make more profit from the same kWh of electricity mining bitcoin versus serving inference. I know…
The same evidence could just as possibly point to supply being too great for demand. The OP article references this as a distinct possibility: if models really have gotten more compute efficient, we may wind up in a…
A lot of people derive their worth from something external. AI brings the emptiness of that worth into sharp relief, but it was always empty. It used to be easier to ignore, though. The obvious retort is "that's cold…
I do this every time I leave NJ. If someone else is pumping their own, I figure it out pretty quickly, but I've definitely lost 10+ minutes before.
I've lived in NJ my entire life and I've never once tipped somebody at the pump. I've had them wipe down my windshield a single-digit number of times. Where was this?
I find it interesting that they did not ask Anthropic staff the question about potential obstacles to adoption. One would think that it would be an extremely high priority for them to understand and clear those…
Ah, I see. A Lazy Susan isn't exactly cutting-edge tech, but you can't argue with the results.
The demand for food delivery in the places where the robots are viable is nearly infinite. My city has had them for two years and there are still just as many humans doing deliveries, they are just sharing the…
A small but meaningful percentage of people have the jobs that they have because they are some combination of fun to be around, attractive, and well-connected. All of these qualities can be productive in some pursuits…
Years ago, I loved playing Puzzle Pirates. There were hundreds or thousands of people active at any given time, the puzzle games were fun, I loved the in-game economy. The game is pretty dead now, but I miss it all the…
Not really, no. Anthropic sells tokens, not services. It's up to the user to turn those tokens into something useful. There are also non-price reasons to switch from human labor to agentic labor. No sick days, no…
One thing I thought about as I responded to these: in many cases, I am convinced that a present-day LLM could accomplish the task at least once given an infinite compute budget and an infinite number of tries. For…
This is a sensible approach for policymakers. For the average person, who might be panicking about this, opting not to have children or save for retirement, etc. as a result of doomerism in the media, it does not make a…
I see what you mean. I meant more that they genuinely believe the tech is dangerous, not that they are necessarily doing the right thing.
High demand is great, but it doesn't say anything about your margins. If anything, it is probably a weak negative signal that they are pausing signups but not raising prices. In most markets, the answer to excess demand…
That's an interesting perspective. Do you know if the deal with Anthropic has an exclusivity provision? In theory, you don't have to "switch," you could just ADD an OpenAI subscription and start splitting your spend (or…
I suspect any intelligence powerful enough to pull this off would quickly realize that it had no use for the oligarchs, perhaps even more quickly than the oligarchs realize they have no use for us.
I'm quibbling that Anthropic has loss leaders and that its profit leaders are extremely unstable. Imagine if there were three Chinese club stores in the same shopping plaza as the Costco. Sure, the regular Costco has…
Your question gets to the heart of who or what a company "is." If you don't pay dividends to your shareholders, what are you doing with all of your profits? I suppose they could just tell their investors to pound sand…
That's a fair point. Maybe the subsidies aren't as relevant as I suspected. Thanks for the insight.
Approximately 80% of revenue comes from consumption-based spending, so your statement would likely be true even if subscriptions were priced below cost. Overall revenue is not especially informative on the price…
I disagree that it only matters if the subsidy results in selling at a loss. Yes, some revenue is better than no revenue. But clearly the demand exists for consumption-based tokens. At its current growth rate, Anthropic…
To the extent they are representing that Claude is potentially sentient, there could be some VERY interesting principal-agent theories (agent in the traditional legal sense) that need to be ironed out to determine…
Subscriptions are heavily subsidized. 80% of their revenue comes from consumption-based pricing, which is not heavily subsidized (and probably not subsidized at all). The trouble is that this revenue is not especially…
About a quarter of Anthropic's revenue for the nine months ended 9/30/26 came from just five customers. That's not an absurd concentration, but I would be very interested to know who they are and how mobile their…
>You can rent your own GPU and make money if your electricity is cheap enough. I would be curious to know whether you'd make more profit from the same kWh of electricity mining bitcoin versus serving inference. I know…
The same evidence could just as possibly point to supply being too great for demand. The OP article references this as a distinct possibility: if models really have gotten more compute efficient, we may wind up in a…
A lot of people derive their worth from something external. AI brings the emptiness of that worth into sharp relief, but it was always empty. It used to be easier to ignore, though. The obvious retort is "that's cold…
I do this every time I leave NJ. If someone else is pumping their own, I figure it out pretty quickly, but I've definitely lost 10+ minutes before.
I've lived in NJ my entire life and I've never once tipped somebody at the pump. I've had them wipe down my windshield a single-digit number of times. Where was this?
I find it interesting that they did not ask Anthropic staff the question about potential obstacles to adoption. One would think that it would be an extremely high priority for them to understand and clear those…
Ah, I see. A Lazy Susan isn't exactly cutting-edge tech, but you can't argue with the results.
The demand for food delivery in the places where the robots are viable is nearly infinite. My city has had them for two years and there are still just as many humans doing deliveries, they are just sharing the…
A small but meaningful percentage of people have the jobs that they have because they are some combination of fun to be around, attractive, and well-connected. All of these qualities can be productive in some pursuits…
Years ago, I loved playing Puzzle Pirates. There were hundreds or thousands of people active at any given time, the puzzle games were fun, I loved the in-game economy. The game is pretty dead now, but I miss it all the…
Not really, no. Anthropic sells tokens, not services. It's up to the user to turn those tokens into something useful. There are also non-price reasons to switch from human labor to agentic labor. No sick days, no…
One thing I thought about as I responded to these: in many cases, I am convinced that a present-day LLM could accomplish the task at least once given an infinite compute budget and an infinite number of tries. For…
This is a sensible approach for policymakers. For the average person, who might be panicking about this, opting not to have children or save for retirement, etc. as a result of doomerism in the media, it does not make a…
I see what you mean. I meant more that they genuinely believe the tech is dangerous, not that they are necessarily doing the right thing.
High demand is great, but it doesn't say anything about your margins. If anything, it is probably a weak negative signal that they are pausing signups but not raising prices. In most markets, the answer to excess demand…