alt Hacker NewsNo one is going to like this answer, but there’s a simple solution: pay for API tokens and adjust your use of CC so that the actions you have it take are worth the cost of the tokens.
It’s great to buy dollars for a penny, but the guy selling em is going to want to charge a dollar eventually…
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This is it. These subscriptions have been heavily subsidized, which was fine when usage was much lower overall. But with so many folks trying to use the tools and soaking up all the chips something has to give.
Now we’re going to find out what these tools are really worth.
I'm forced to do this at work. It adjusts the net value to very close to zero. Github's pay per prompt pricing model is phenomenal for users to the point of blowing Anthropic's subscription offering out of the water, much less API pricing. At Copilot pricing, it's quite a useful tool if carefully managed. At API pricing, it's very hard to find a use case for AI.
Of course, I have no idea how MS is justifying the Copilot pricing. I can't imagine any world in which it is sustainable, so I'm trying to get as much as I can out of it now before they jack up prices.
it's not a subsidy. It's predatory pricing and it should be illegal. I offer you a service at a loss to remove competition and then increase prices once you are stuck with it.
I just want a little predictable insight into how much I get. For example, at a buffet, I know I can only eat so much food and can plan around it. This is like going to a buffet and not knowing how many plates I can take or how big the plates are, and it changes each week, and yet I have to keep paying the same price. Except it's not about eating, it's about my work and deadlines and promises and all that.
The problem with tokens is that they have wrong incentive. The quicker model arrives at the solution the less tokens you have to buy.
So I noticed the model is purposefully coming with dumb ideas or running around in circles and only when you tell it that they are trying to defraud you, they suddenly come back with a right solution.
...pay for API tokens and adjust your use of CC so that the actions you have it take are worth the cost of the tokens
Do you feel there is enough visibility and stability around the "Prompt -> API token usage" connection to make a reliable estimate as to what using the API may end up costing?
Personally, it feels like paying for Netflix based on "data usage" without having anyway for me to know ahead of time how much data any given episode or movie will end up using, because Netflix is constantly changing the quality/compression/etc on the fly.