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The Year of Internal Tools

68 points · 33 comments · thecodemonkey

  1. saadn92 · · focus · HN ↗
    Can also say the year that subscriptions go down, because now you can finally build your own systems exactly to your liking. Save money and have something that works just for you. LLMs are awesome.
    1. phinnaeus · · focus · HN ↗
      Who pays for ongoing maintenance of all those things you built and now own
      1. saadn92 · · focus · HN ↗
        good question. maintenance is cheap with tools like astra/opus. also, these aren't production level applications, so I don't need to worry about it being "perfect" (though there's no such thing)
        1. ironman1478 · · focus · HN ↗
          What happens when these companies decide to start increasing the cost/token, exceeding the cost of hiring an engineer or paying for an external service in the first place?
          1. istjohn · · focus · HN ↗
            Cost per intelligence-adjusted token has been in free-fall since GPT-3 landed five years ago [0]. I see no compelling reason to think we'll see that trend suddenly stop, much less reverse.

            0. &quot;The cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has fallen about 47% per quarter since 2023, or 13× per year.&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;epoch.ai&#x2F;publications&#x2F;the-plunging-price-of-thought" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;epoch.ai&#x2F;publications&#x2F;the-plunging-price-of-thought

            1. oblio · · focus · HN ↗
              Yet OpenAI is losing $2 for every $1 they&#x27;re making :-?
          2. oblio · · focus · HN ↗
            No, they would never...

            What do you mean? They need to recover hundreds of billions in sunk costs?

          3. spit2wind · · focus · HN ↗
            Or they optimize the model for just one more hit, er, prompt. All these AI companies are backed by the same companies optimizing revenue via addiction.

            So, same end result (cost exceeds hiring a new engineer), but achieved differently.

            The counter, I suppose, is the managers have to deal less with engineers telling them their ideas aren&#x27;t good or well thought out.

          4. saadn92 · · focus · HN ↗
            it&#x27;s certainly possible and has happened before, but that&#x27;s why I&#x27;m hoping for two things:

            1.) open weight models gain more popularity 2.) i&#x27;m making more money from these models than paying for them

            if either happens, then I&#x27;ll feel good about it either way

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