As a TCS assistant professor from Eastern Europe, I always am a little jealous of the biggest names in math having such an easy access to the expensive, long thinking models.
Paying for Pro from any of my current academic budgets is completely ouf of the field of reality here -- all budgets tend to have restricted uses and software payments fit into very few categories. Effectively, I'd have to ask for a brand new grant and hope the grant rules allow for large software payments and I won't encounter an anti-AI reviewer; such a thing would take one year at least.
As a nail to the coffin, I was "denied" all Claude Opus recently as part of Microsoft's clampdown on individual (and academic) use of Copilot.
(Chagpt 5.5 Plus does not seem sufficient for any deeper investigations into new research topics, I've tried.)
Apologies for the rant.
@NotOscarWilde drop your email here, I will reach out and happy to get you a pro account for a few months so you can try 5.5 pro.(work at OAI)
While this sounds generous (and in some ways it is), it does not address the general point that GP is making. That is, the systematic disadvantage which large parts of humanity have w.r.t. to access to the tools. You could say they can't drive a Lambhorgini either, but that also doesn't solve the problem.
You're absolutely right (pun intended).
An aside: It was a very nice gesture and completely unexpected by me, so even if it doesn't work out, it made my day. I personally believe that kind gestures have a lot of power.
Back on topic: There is a real danger of the gap between rich and poor universities significantly widening in all fields if the rich can afford Pro level models, or even hardware that can run their own comparable models, and this being fiscally inaccessible to the rest.
One can sweep this under the rug by blaming the educational funding but this just shoots down all discussion. Even if GDP of a country goes up by a lot -- such as Poland -- it takes time before any budget benefit trickles to the education budget, and with some governments it might never do.
I believe Microsoft et al do have the most power here to boost affordable access to AI for researchers on a large scale; the fact that they cut some too expensive models (Opus, 5.5) from their academic benefits package is a grim omen. I do realize they would like universities to pay them also, and ultimately the universities should do that -- but then we are back at the institutional level of the problem.
Its a problem of the individual institutions and countries. The budget required for AI tools currently is negligible compared to other university expenses. We don't need to call everything a systemic disadvantage when the disadvantaged (at the institution level) have agency here.
Can you tell me what is the budget necessary to supply AI tools capable of substantial research assistance to all academic staff at a university?
You seem to have a good estimate in your head; I definitely do not.
From personal experience, ChatGPT 5.5 (the Plus tier) is excellent for programming tasks and also for various teaching related tasks but I have not observed the research benefits that Tim Gowers has when I asked it questions in my area of expertise. So the costs are definitely higher than a few dozen $ a month per PhD/professor.
You might be right that universities should immediately spring into action and demand funding for research level AI resources and hardware. One thing you might be mistaken in is that public universities are unfortunately very inflexible institutions; one reason for this is that they have a large internal leadership structure AND they are funded by the state, so even if the entire university agrees on something, the funding is at the whim of the ministry of education and thus the current political leadership.
> Can you tell me what is the budget necessary to supply AI tools capable of substantial research assistance to all academic staff at a university?
I think the GP meant that *if the tools provide substantial benefit* to staff, their costs can be compared to salaries and other large expenses of the university. The $100/month subscription costs less than your office space.
I mean, I don't think OpenAI should be wading into the policies and practices of foreign institutions and governments. Look at all the blowback we see from the collision of Anthropic or OpenAI and the US government.
At present, the tools are available for whomever wants to buy them. Not OpenAI's fault that parent comment's government and/or institutions policies haven't been updated to allow for their purchase and use.
I'd argue that the OpenAI dude/dudettes level of generosity is appropriate given the circumstances.
And what should he do after the few months?
This requires a major "dox" of myself, but I am really grateful for the offer, so these are my academic contacts:
https://pastebin.com/hNYrCjhL
I probably will erase the contents in a few days.
Even if you just drop an email and it doesn't work out, I appreciate this gesture so much. Thank you.
Got the contact, will reach out tomorrow, you can delete them.
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Shoutout to you-I will match it if they need other resources. (I don’t work at OAI, just think this is cool)
You know what, I'm ashamed that I didn't think of this. I'll sponsor three months. Email in my hn profile. I don't understand the math in the article, but I'd love to help you make progress in it.
same.
I will leave the contact up for a bit longer if people want to get in touch and share their experience with the research gap of the models -- or anything, really -- but I do not think there is any need of further support. Like I said elsewhere, the offer of support made my day and the gesture is enough.
Thank you.
At my university, everyone had to pay their AI subscriptions out of their own pocket, until a communal AI service was introduced recently. It took 2 years to set up and only serves gpt-oss-120b, so everyone is still using other services. But at least some admin can scatter the word "AI" all over the university's website now and has an excuse to reject any requests for AI subscriptions because "we already have AI".
It’s a classic example of the best positioned people being in the best position to keep reaping all the rewards.
There’s the example of a poor person and a rich person buying boots. The poor person’s boots wear out and have to be replaced while the rich persons boots last for many years due to higher quality craftsmanship. Over years, the poor person’s boots wear will pay may for boots.
I know the example, but as a counter-argument: often more expensive boots are not more durable. It’s about spending time to learn to spot the quality.
Of course if you are really poor, then you have to take expensive shortcuts, but for most people that shouldn’t be the case. Learning to do more with less money isn’t as bad as many people think. It’s also good for the brain to be a bit more creative.
> Learning to do more with less money isn’t as bad as many people think.
We are wading into philosophy here, but I believe this analogy doesn't track in this case -- my suspicion from this blog post and others is that already today, the Pro level thinking models are a positive multiplier to your research output similar to how the models one level lower are a multiplier to one's programming output.
Maybe one can someday use the cheaper models similar to how you can use cheaper models than Opus/5.5 and still be nearly as productive as a programmer -- but I am trying and failing doing exactly that for research questions.
here I think it's less about "poverty" (non-US acedemic budgets are still high, though not in the same sphere), but it's about having red tape when it comes to software. My experience doing a PhD in Japan was: Everything you can touch was basically a free for all - including $500 keyboards and $10k Mac Pros, especially if you are a valued researcher. But software, oh man, how can we prove receipt of goods to accounting...
OpenRouter lets you pay by the token only (no subscription), has all the frontier models (including Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5) and most of the others, and if you use it sparingly it usually turns out to be quite cheap.
API pricing for Claude is about an order of magnitude more expensive than subscriptions (numbers: https://she-llac.com/claude-limits). But it may be worth it with DeepSeek V4 Pro, which is currently on discount.
Depends very much on usage! If you connect it to tools like Cursor, etc. then yes a subscription is probably cheaper -- although, you'd have to subscribe to each provider if you want to use them all.
But if you ask questions occasionally, (and don't resend, for example, your whole codebase with each request), then the API feels really cheap, even for the frontier models.
My problem with pay-by-the-token is that it discourages me using the thing ("oh the prompt will cost me $0.1"), so I pay a subscription which I'm pretty sure costs me about two-three times what I'd pay just for the api costs, but encourages me to use it more ("oh I have a subscription already, better make use of it").
I believe ChatGPT 5.5 Pro access is available for $100/month, is that an unrealistic level of expense for someone in your position and geography? Even if the university won't pay for it, it seems you'd like to use this tool for your own goals.
I'm not trying to shame here, just curious whether this is completely unattainable for most researchers in your area.
It appears that in their country someone in their position makes about 50k usd annually. I make a similar amount in my country and cannot justify it.
I fully understand your rant! I pay ~20€/month for the Pro account, as my university has a deal with Microsoft and only seems to recognize Copilot, so it’s very hard to use one own’s funding for paying something else.
Paste what you want me to ask 5.5 Pro and I'll paste you the response.
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For a TCS assistant professor in Eastern Europe, $200/month would be 20% of their salary.
And the situation is better, ten years ago it would have been 80%.
Average European salary is around $4000/month, in eastern Europe is half of that. Median is probably lower than that. Makes me want to quit visiting places like reddit where everybody claims to be making 100k+/year
All salary discussions need a cost of living context. Yes in Europe you earn a bit less but the public services are much better than in the US and one emergency (r.g. healthcare) won't ruin you as it's mostly a public system.
I'll take a Euro salary and qualify life over a FIRE-typs salary and daily fear of falling into the abyss any day.
Given the topic and the fact llm providers charge global rates, the absolute take-home money is much more relevant. Even if you live like a king on $1000/mo, 5.5 pro is still $200.
Their loss if they don't move to regional pricing. AI will continue to remain an upper-management luxury then, and won't reach the mass adoption required to justify their outsized valuations.
Regional pricing makes sense for products that don’t have ongoing costs or where most of the input cost can be offset by local labor. You’re not buying server racks nor electricity at 1/3 of the price to serve poorer markets
AI pricing is not mainly about cost, it's about market realities, i.e., charging exactly the sweet spot to maximize profit.
Lots of people in the west can’t afford 200 a month. How rich are you?
That’s what most people spend on their phone and Internet connections per month in the US. That’s what the average American family spends on just five days of food.
You can afford five days of food, so that must mean you can also afford a Claude Max plan? What kind of logic is this?
Fwiw your comments here read to me as “I’m super rich and everyone I know is super rich too, and I can’t imagine that anyone isn’t”.
People spend much more than that on just commuting to work if you can spend $200 a month to supercharge what you do at work and 1000x your productivity it’s a no-brainer.
From what money? Just pause the health insurance for a while? Stop paying the rent? No diapers for the kid?
Your entire story only makes sense if you have many hundreds of dollars/euros of entirely disposable income every month left, after all unavoidable expenses have been paid for. I understand that this holds for you and everyone you know but I’d like you to appreciate that for very many people it doesn’t.
Yes and? That's money that is already allocated. It cannot be spent on something else.
No you don't get it. If the family just starved for 5 days then they could increase revenue for these AI companies.
37% of Americans would be unable to cover a 400 usd unexpected expense* without using one or more credit cards. 13% would flat out be unable to cover it. [1]
Are you honestly saying most families would be able to justify 200 usd a month for ChatGPT?
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...
There is a significant gap between what academics are paid across European countries, and since most top universities here are public institutions, you are right -- Eastern European government employees tend to be on the poorer side.
There are several other philosophical arguments against what you propose but I do not wish to go down that route.
Bruh, $200/m for most people in the US is also a hard "no!". That's a lot of money. Plus Anthropic isn't doing good deals with orgs that spend less than 250k a month. It's ridiculous.
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