Already in your first point you are mixing up two claims Ed also likes to mix up. The funny thing is these claims are in direct conflict with each other. There is the question of whether people find AI worth paying for given what they get. You seem to think this is in some doubt, meanwhile here are tons of people paying for it, some even begging to be allowed to pay more in order to get more. The labs have revenue growing 20% per month. So I think that version of the point is absurd on its face. (And that's exactly why my thing about the cost-quality tradeoff being real is relevant. At least we agree on the relationship between these points.)

Ed doesn’t really make that argument anymore. The more recent form of the point is: yes, clearly people are willing to pay for it, but only because the providers are burning VC money to sell it below cost. If sold at a profit, customers would no longer find it worth it. But that’s completely different from what you’re saying. And I also think that’s not true, for a few reasons: mostly that selling near cost is the simplest explanation for the similarity of prices between providers. And now recently we have both Altman and Amodei saying their companies are selling inference at a profit.