I agree. It is either ads, or Anthropic way (which is: you are too poor to use our ChatBot). There is no other way to pay the > $1 trillion per year CapEx for building these chat bots.

Would there be other way? Sure, it could be government-funded, like our public school system. But it is not possible in current political climate.

Money doesn't grow on trees, and tokens cost a lot of money. There will be divide into people who can afford these tokens and people who cannot. I feel it is better to have ways to let people who cannot afford these tokens to have some ways to try it.

This impacts a non-free plan; their $8/month plan now has ads too.

You can't trust a product that uses ads, because then you are the product.