Developers at big companies need to pay per token, they don't have subscription available. So in case you use that, you likely spend way more than $20 in tokens.

As for how to spend that much -- not that hard, to be honest. Just give it a lot of context and some relatively open-ended problem and it will easily eat through tons of tokens.

I have $200 subscription for Codex and it is crazy what it can do in terms of debugging. I have a pretty complex Electron setup with some native code linked via Node addons, a few App Extensions and it can easily read the source code to see how the builder works internally (e.g. if your end Info.plist is not correct), debug the xcodebuild output to see at which step something is not linked correctly (like after XCode major version bump), etc.

It is not a silver bullet but if you are not the one paying for it, there is no downside to throw a problem at it and see if it can come up with a fix.

> And, if they are pouring thousands into LLMs per developer, have they considered looking at alternatives like having LLMs running locally on own hardware with their own agent harness?

I am curious about that myself. I have a good machine now (Macbook Pro M5 Pro with 48GB memory), so I'll give it a try; I don't have high expectations so if it is actually helpful would be very neat.

I agree with your message but not sure about the conclusion. Cars themselves are commodified luxury available (in the US pretty much required) to everyone, and they do need to be subsidized, both in terms of infrastructure and the lifestyle they require.

But with AI what is the exact price? My understanding is that R&D is extremely expensive, but running non-SOTA models is not that bad. We are getting pretty close to models which can be useful locally in many applications.

Or do you mean that at scale running them locally is not possible and hence the infrastructure price is in data centers, which will be expensive to maintain and scale for demand?

Thanks for asking an open question about my point.

First, because I initially failed to answer your more closed questions (this paragraph is edited in):

> We are getting pretty close to models which can be useful locally in many applications. Or do you mean that at scale running them locally is not possible and hence the infrastructure price is in data centers, which will be expensive to maintain and scale for demand?

I don't think there's a way around making the best of AI capabilities with minimum price and maximum control, and I'd agree this is met by on-prem data centers, just not in a rationally targeted way.

Back to my original comment:

Because it (my conclusion) was not so clear, and maybe I just wanted to highlight some observations without delivering a real argument for or against things [, I thank you for your open question].

The utility/leverage aspect for AI seems more esoteric than the one for cars because, apart from Chatbots, it's more hidden.

And also, similar to cars (or many other phenomena of industrialization), yes, my first vague point was the subsidization of infrastructure. But also, the power gap: that's something not only associated with AI or cars, but with a lot of technologies we all hold dear: sewage, powerline, logistics, etc etc.

What reminds me of cars in the current AI frenzy is the fixation on cementing infrastructure. And also, I think, a lot more people agree on, for example, some kind of universal right to, for example, clean water.

But all of industrialization confronts people with questions of efficiency, inequality, and collective support.

Most people would, for example, support a right to get a minimum amount of clean water when you are living and working in a tradionally inhabited space (if you're on the social-darwinist side) or at least not harming society (if you're more of a social democrat).

And, similar to the buildup of car infrastructure, and the procurement of resources, space etc for maximum building, giant data centers can obstruct people in buying drinking water. Or walking outside (AI obstructs traditional methods of online collaboration).

You can't uninstall Apple Music as far as I am aware, so it is not just a "music player" but a specific app, which I personally don't use. For the play button I at least see the point, but it opens it when you insert an audio CD, for example. Even Windows asks what to do in a notification.

> You can't uninstall Apple Music

Internet Explorer bundling was an instruction manual!

I thought about "poisoning" in this context as well. Even if there is not that much AI, if there is enough that you start second guessing every other comment, I start thinking what am I doing there.

Could be just the team culture. The meeting thing is pretty weird, but what happens if you just show up and tap them on the shoulder? Do they get annoyed or overall happy to chat? What about just drinking coffee/tea?

It also can be that the office space itself is too noisy so any discussion can distract a lot of people.

It sounds weird indeed, but maybe some higher-ups decided this is a way to go in case people need to be isolated again or when it's necessary to hire some remote coworkers who shouldn't be left behind, etc.

I suppose the issue is that they will simply ask their LLM to summarize and to reply, so if anything, it might just normalize and justify it a bit more.

Turning people down when they ask questions is such a short-sighted perspective. When you answer, you can tailor it to them, you can give extra context, you can elaborate, you can dive into specific nuances. Long-term it will be very likely a positive thing as the person will trust you more, they will be comfortable asking more questions and the knowledge might actually help them to contribute in the future.

Ironically, the ability of LLMs to give contextually appropriate answers seemingly applicable to your exact situation is seen to be the major selling point of "AI" by its boosters.

Not endorsing, don't shoot messenger.

I've seen people on reddit having entire conversations with clearly bots, often on a post clearly written by a bot itself. I am sure some people are disgusted by that (I am certainly not a fan), but it seems that many are fine, or who knows, maybe it was even other bots.

I suppose there could be a tipping point if enough people leave and genuine interaction becomes rare that it will be too obvious, but at this point I don't know. But I am on a brink of quitting reddit, nearly all popular subs I like are AI-infested and it is just exhausting.

It could be there's a fork in the road for reddit.

Some people are probably fine, even happy, immersing themselves in an all-bot world that panders to their worldview and strokes their virtual needs.

While others are looking for thought provoking interactions with humans.

Reddit needs to pick one or the other as their target audience. Trying to satisfy both will kill them.

Solving their bot problem would obviously nuke their audience and engagement metrics, but reddit is in a unique position to take that hit - at this time anyway.

Every other post too. At this point it is quite challenging to find a genuine human interaction on popular online sites.

All you need is to invest into the index funds tracking some sort of the total market and you are golden. Not sure if I would describe that as aggressive.

But I fully agree that mortgage forces people to actually save money, most people would just spend it all.