Comment by nen-nomad

Usage plunges on the weekends and during the summer, suggesting that a significant portion of users are students using ChatGPT for free or at heavily subsidized rates to do homework (i.e., extremely basic work that is extraordinarily well-represented in the training data). That usage will almost certainly never be monetizable, and it suggests nothing about the trajectory of the technology’s capability or popularity. I suspect ChatGPT, in particular, will see its usage slip considerably as the education system (hopefully) adapts.

“Almost everyone will use it at free or effectively subsidized prices” and “It delivers utility which justifies its variable costs + fixed costs amortized over useful lifetime” are not the same thing, and its not clear how much of the use is tied to novelty such that if new and progressively more expensive to train releases at a regular cadence dropped off, usage, even at subsidized prices, would, too.

How many pay? And out of that how many are willing to pay the amount to at least cover the inference costs (not loss leading?)

Outside the verifiable domains I think the impact is more assistance/augmentation than outright disruption (i.e. a novelty which is still nice). A little tiny bit of value sprinkled over a very large user base but each person deriving little value overall.

Even as they use it as search it is at best an incrementable improvement on what they used to do - not life changing.

The adoption is just so weird to me. I cannot for the life of me get LLM chatbot to work for me. Every time I try I get into an argument with the stupid thing. They are still wrong constantly, and when I'm wrong they won't correct me.

I have great faith in AI in e.g. medical equipment, or otherwise as something built in, working on a single problem in the background, but the chat interface is terrible.

Even my mom and aunts are using it frequently for all sorts of things, and it took a long time for them to hop onto internet and smartphones at first.