Opus-tier on open models and local hardware.
The thing that is being subsidized is the TRAINING costs, and that is because they aren’t selling enough tokens yet to pay for the training costs. This is just like most other growth businesses, though, and if enough people use enough inference, it can be self sustaining.
If the subscriptions (of all of the big companies - unlikely?) give a poor amount of value in the future, will move to trusted/open router and use a harness that uses the latest cheap good models for most things, more expensive models as orchestrators.
Already there are non-SOTA models that should be sufficient for most non-coding tasks, and soon for coding, also.
The future is bright, in that respect, without subsidizing the ridiculous IPOs.
But for enterprises, who have to pay API costs with no discounts, no way.
How is tokenmaxxing like ejaculating exactly? I don't follow the analogy.
1) There was a false narrative called tokenmaxxing whereby one is more productive by spending more tokens
2) This narrative was fueled by discount prices on tokens (which still happens to this day on subscriptions)
3) There is a point where we collectively realize that tokenmaxxing was a state of mind that is not rational for either the consumer or provider
4) We will then pay API prices because LLMs are obviously amazing but no one will offer subscriptions
5) API costs of Opus 5.5 and Fable tier become uneconomical
6) That leaves us in Sonnet/Haiku tier
The analogy made sense to me: Tokenmaxxing policies were the result of an irrational drive by execs who just craved an, ahem, explosion of metrics due to the excitement over new technology. Now that cost sensitivities are setting in, there’s a growing sense of unease that maybe they were in an altered state when they created the mess and now that the excitement has passed they have to clean it up.
Or is it just a throwaway phrase that makes no sense?