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miki123211 • today at 8:30 AM • 0 replies • view on HN

People who make things often have an unrealistic expectation of how much users care about quality (and don't realize how much users actually care about price).

We've seen this play out over and over again, in many different sectors. The whole shtick of the old (Bellhead) telecom world was quality at the (literal) expense of price, which didn't work out well for them. Same for CD versus pirated mp3s, DVD versus pirated videos (and, to a lesser extend, theaters versus bootleg cam releases), native texting / GSM calls versus WhatsApp and similar, mainstream newspapers and media versus blogging and social media, traditional electrical appliances versus Chinese-made, and so on.

Because of the innovator's dilemma, In many cases, the cheaper, lower-quality product later surpasses the quality of its more expensive counterpart.

AI is just one more example of this happening. It lets you make more things which otherwise would be far too expensive to make, even if that often means a lower quality product.