Thank you for sharing this article. I think the graphs in it were useful in understanding the different pricing structures. One thing that I would have included is pricing based on AI that I own, through capital expenditure (CapEx).

However, it's much harder to compare. For one, the cost per token is difficult to measure until a sufficient amount of time has passed so that an extrapolation is more accurate. Also, there are performance considerations where a local solution might be more or less accurate than an equivalent online AI. In addition, the reduced compliance risk is hard to quantify or it makes online AI practically useless.

I don't understand how people got buy-in for a business model that assumed token costs would go down indefinitely. All tech startups follow a blitz-scaling pattern where they practically give away their services for free, trap customers in a moat, and then extort as much money as they can.