> the operators who have no aligned incentives
The model providers are quite aligned with concerns like customer retention. These arguments only work if there is no competition. We exist in a marketplace of black boxes. There's not just "the one" you must suffer. You have options. You can build your own too.
There is so obviously competition in this market it’s astounding to me that people attribute all this malicious behavior to the model companies.
They’re growing over 10x a year. They want users and revenue. In order to get users and revenue, they want to provide the smartest models at affordable prices. If they unnecessarily burn tokens, users will get less value and switch.
This thread is filled with competing comments about their monopolistic power and how when one model provider was no longer doing a good job people switched to a different one.
The competition in this market is ferocious!
there are roughly three of them and they all use the same pricing model. I am also not in the position to build a frontier model company these days.
A per-token model roughly aligns with the providers' costs, and it is an objective measure, so it seems a reasonable way to charge.
I see posts all the time on HN about which models from which providers offer the most bang-for-the-buck, and how to minimize token usage and still get optimal results, so it appears that competition is working.
You could try:
1. Self hosting
2. Chinese models
3. Running it locally. Requires upfront cost and compromises on TPS.
There are more than 3.
Hell, I use 3 different providers, and I currently don't give a dime to Anthropic or OpenAI.