For each AI query, you pay twice. And only the first round is paid in money (and it’s the cheaper one).
But this isn’t the worst of it; this one interview with Karp, Palantir’s CEO, went viral:
I’m going to get no value, and they’re (the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI) going to get my IP. (02:17-02:21)
About the same time, Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, published this (a calm version of essentially the same statement)
The buyer is giving away knowledge, just in order to use what they bought.
Basically, both CEOs are saying the same thing: The number on your invoice isn’t what you actually paid. You might even have already overpaid for what a model could realistically achieve, bringing your ROI into doubt.
With these CEOs starting to voice the ‘truth’ (certainly not because it aligns with their incentives), I’ll answer these five questions:
What does AI actually cost? Imagine there are no subsidies.
Apart from money, what else are you paying the labs (such as OpenAI and Anthropic) for?
How does AI rewrite competition? Do you stand a chance against your vendor-turned-competitor?
What do the hyperscalers' CEOs recommend the world do?
What does it all mean to the AI industry?
To start with, the true token cost.
