I was listening to a surprisingly combative interview with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan yesterday and amidst all the usual, expected stuff--like his general AI delusions and bizarre evasion of the question "what video game are you playing right now?"--I was struck by one response in particular, about subscription costs.
Nilay Patel
Asked by The Verge's Nilay Patel whether he truly sees value in subscribing to AI platforms, Tan says he sees value in all kinds of subscriptions. Here's a transcript of the part I'm talking about:
Patel: Are you seeing signs that the AI stuff is gonna be worth paying for that way? I mean, this is the bubble. We’re gonna spend all this money, we’ll forward invest in all this infrastructure. We’re gonna skyrocket the price of RAM and GPUs, and then at the end of the day, people are going to say, “That’s not actually worth the 20 bucks a month.”
Tan: I don’t necessarily see it as AI, per se, but I see the kind of value that I get out of it. So, for example, a ChatGPT subscription, or a Grok subscription, for that matter. I do see value in it, and that’s why I pay for it. And that’s the way I see it. I don’t see myself as paying for AI, per se. I see it as what am I getting out of a chatbot, for example, that can advise me on travel matters, health matters, whatever it is, my day-to-day, and stuff like that. Is that worth 20 bucks to me?
Because you’re a billionaire, right?
Sure.
I’m just saying, the marginal cost is meaningless to you.
20 bucks is still 20 bucks, that’s right.
I’m just saying.
Right.
I think for a lot of people, that is meaningful, especially stacked on top of all the other money they pay. Basically, I’m saying, do you see that critique of AI as a bubble? That the investment has not yet delivered the value that will make it so obvious that the investment’s worth it?
So I see that. I mean, huge amounts of investments are going into it. We are investing in AI, I think, as we speak. But I do see the potential at this point. In many cases, I mean, look at the number of paid subscribers for ChatGPT, for example. People do see the value in terms of whether it’s a chatbot AI, so on and so forth. I do think the potential is going to be realized.
"Because you’re a billionaire" has stuck with me. Tan is one of many billionaires at the vanguard of the AI push, empty men whose only reference point and purpose in life is seemingly to make a line go up for as long as possible. And that push, as it stands, is almost entirely reliant on platforms like ChatGPT and Grok going from free, idle curiosities to something millions of people pay a substantial amount of money for every month.
I am not a billionaire, but I am a guy reliant on people paying a monthly subscription for something people used to get for free, and let me tell you: good luck guys. At its height in the 2010s, I was writing for an audience at Kotaku that could number between 20-30 million people every month. I am now co-founder of a website that, asking for $7 in return for video game blogs, has 5000 paying subscribers (thank you everyone!).
That math works out for me because I am a normal person with normal person obligations like bills and groceries. It absolutely does not work out for companies that are on the hook for billions in data centre and loans, let alone lawsuits and licensing disputes. To even entertain the thought that the AI bubble could be propped up in any way by subscription costs, let alone commit your entire business model to it, is insane to a normal person!
But these aren't normal people. They're billionaires. And hearing Tan say "I do see value in it, and that’s why I pay for it", oblivious to what subscription costs (and fatigue) means to the average person on the street, made me think of this famous (if you're into basketball) line from Dwyane Wade's wife Gabrielle Union, where she explains how the multi-millionaire former pro athlete had no idea how much milk cost when he retired:
Wade's wife Gabrielle Union says he doesn't know how much milk costs or what happens at car washes: "He has no idea how much milk costs. He's like 'what is that, like $20?'"
by u/deadskin in nba
That's a cute story! Dwyane Wade seems like a nice guy, and I'm sure he now knows exactly how much milk costs. He was not, like Tan, a billionaire entirely divorced from the common human experience, trying to force a lake-boiling, job-displacing plagiarism machine on the world against its collective wishes.
There are a lot of ideas going around right now about how we can best curb the power of the billionaire class. Capping personal incomes, increasing taxes and tighter regulation of the share markets are all good places to start, but maybe I can add another one on top (they'd have to do this as well as pay more tax): every person who earns over 999 million has to spend a year stuck with the rest of us, doing what amounts to community service, in so much as it forces them to be part of a community. They have to draw from a median salary, pay a mortgage, feed kids, commute to work and navigate the healthcare system, without their billions or associated support network to bail them out.
Let's see what dipshits like Tan think about subscription costs for AI slop when $20 is three hours' work. If that job hasn't been replaced with AI already.
