I think you’ve answered a different question to the one I was making. I’m not claiming chatbots are a sound business. I’m saying the pricing path follows the Uber/Airbnb playbook: subsidise hard to build the user base, then tighten the consumer tier once the real money is elsewhere. That’s the “as intended” bit.
Uber’s also a shaky example for “virtually no OpEx”. It lost money for the better part of a decade, running on investor-funded rides and driver incentives, before it squeezed either side. That’s the pattern I was pointing at: generous now, worse later.
Whether the underlying business holds up is a separate argument, and you’ve got a fair point there (Air Canada is a good example of the liability risk). It just isn’t the argument I was making.
I think part of that is because Uber’s version of “AI companies chasing AGI” was self-driving cars. They were pretty obviously just relying on human drivers until they could replace them with self-driving cars. When it turned out that was going to take too long, that was when they really started raising prices and lowering pay. They also had to get into delivering food, competing with Doordash etc. I think the AI companies will try to follow this model: raise prices, lower services, and pivot to an alternative market that uses similar tech. I don’t know what that would be for AI, though. Ultimately, the real difference between Uber/Airbnb and the newer AI companies is that Uber and Airbnb worked on a technical level. This AI shit does not.
I think you’ve answered a different question to the one I was making. I’m not claiming chatbots are a sound business. I’m saying the pricing path follows the Uber/Airbnb playbook: subsidise hard to build the user base, then tighten the consumer tier once the real money is elsewhere. That’s the “as intended” bit.
Uber’s also a shaky example for “virtually no OpEx”. It lost money for the better part of a decade, running on investor-funded rides and driver incentives, before it squeezed either side. That’s the pattern I was pointing at: generous now, worse later.
Whether the underlying business holds up is a separate argument, and you’ve got a fair point there (Air Canada is a good example of the liability risk). It just isn’t the argument I was making.
I think part of that is because Uber’s version of “AI companies chasing AGI” was self-driving cars. They were pretty obviously just relying on human drivers until they could replace them with self-driving cars. When it turned out that was going to take too long, that was when they really started raising prices and lowering pay. They also had to get into delivering food, competing with Doordash etc. I think the AI companies will try to follow this model: raise prices, lower services, and pivot to an alternative market that uses similar tech. I don’t know what that would be for AI, though. Ultimately, the real difference between Uber/Airbnb and the newer AI companies is that Uber and Airbnb worked on a technical level. This AI shit does not.