Is AI Going to Become Too Expensive?
I keep the heat low and lights off to ensure ChatGPT can reverse a string.
Q1 is approaching, and companies are allocating how much money they'll spend on "make more money" projects. Unless something drastically changes, I expect a significant increase in spending on AI tools, services, etc. However, these tools are getting expensive to run. Recently, OpenAI announced 'o3', which hit between $2000 and $3000 per task on the high compute option. That is bonkers for a task that takes me a little extra caffeine.
Is the juice worth the squeeze as the improvements become smaller and smaller? I've seen many investor-type talks about "AGI," which things like o3 aren't, but even if we hit the next level, will it be affordable?
A few factors are going to skyrocket the costs.
Energy
All it took was AI hype to talk about nuclear energy again. A single GPT query can be 10x-15x more expensive than a single Google search—even a Google search spammed with ads.
Whatever energy solution is decided, consumers will be burdened with costs. This includes the development of server farms, maintenance, etc.
Energy is not free, and it is certainly not cheap.
