Comment by FridgeSeal
9 days ago
> Millions of todays users will not just decide that they don't want to use claude code or chatgpt anymore
Won’t they? For a great number of people, LLM’s are in the “nice to have” basket. Execs and hucksters foam at the mouth over them, other people find utility but the vast majority are not upending their life in service of them.
I suspect if ChatGPT evaporated tomorrow, the chronically dependent would struggle, most people would shrug and go on with their lives, and any actual use cases would probably spin up a local model and go back to whatever they’re doing.
I’m not denying hardware demand will evaporate, it definitely won’t, but interrupt the cycle and “ehh, good enough” will probably go a very long way for a very large percentage of the userbase.
I am not sure I understand. I agree: If AI were to disappear tomorrow, people would adjust (as they did when AI, or the iPhone or the internet appeared). That's what people do.
But now there is user demand. Who or what would take away AI? What is the scenario?
Lots of companies right now have slapped AI features on their products without extra cost. Some are offering it for free (e.g. search engines). If LLM costs significantly increase, I would expect free AI features to disappear or become extra paid features (already started to happen in some SASS), while any free LLMs become simpler and cheaper.
This is making the scenario more complicated, because now we also have to consider products without product market fit, which is an entirely different issue. I don't know how to think about that.
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