Some days I sit back and watch these AI tools—these supposed miracles of our time—and I wonder: what did we actually buy? We didn’t buy the technology. We bought a subscription to someone else’s control. It hits you when you realize your usage metrics are a black hole. Perfect for them to build a business on—perfect for us to lose track of what we’re actually paying for.
This isn’t about hating progress. It’s about recognizing the pattern. The same way your phone carrier suddenly “upgrades” your plan, the same way your streaming service adds another fee, the AI companies are discovering that magic isn’t free. And they’re not telling us the real price tag until we’re already hooked.
The Real Story
- The Black Box of Usage
You love it when your usage metrics are a mystery, right? It’s perfect for building a business on top of it. Companies can charge whatever they want because you have no idea what you’re actually consuming. It’s like going to a restaurant where the menu doesn’t list prices—you’re expected to trust that whatever they charge is fair. Except in this case, the restaurant is laughing all the way to the bank because they know you’ll keep coming back, blind to the real cost.
The Hidden Costs of Automation
Remember when everyone was hyped about replacing people with LLMs? Like, even if it could work, what happens when the company decides to charge 100x more? Your entire workflow is now dependent on their tool, and they control the usage. I’ve seen colleagues rack up $150 an hour from various agents—enough to hire six decent devs. But instead of hiring people, they’re babysitting these unreliable agents, double-checking everything. It’s like having interns who can’t be trusted with a fork and an outlet. Who’s winning here?AWS Was Just the Warm-Up
Honestly, it’s already happening with AWS. The subscription model offers “very good value” (most of the time) to get you hooked, then encourages you to use their API—which comes with a price tag. The problem? It’s way more expensive. Adding a single feature to a tiny app can eat $1 through API. For comparison, the $200 Max Plan gave you $2000 worth of API calls—effectively making it feel nearly unlimited. Now all AI companies are introducing their own tools to keep you from running away to competition. They don’t want you self-hosting or switching to something like Qwen 3.5. They want you locked in.
Nobody Knows the Real Price
I joined a team using Databricks, and I asked how the charges actually work. Nobody could give a good answer. My suspicion? Nobody really knows what constitutes a “unit.” It’s the perfect setup for a company to create and sell a product primarily designed to screw people over—then actually screw its users over. And you wonder why I’m shocked? I’m not. I’m just watching the pattern unfold.The “It Works Great, You’re Just Doing It Wrong” Defense
This is the typical AI booster response. “It works great, you’re just doing it wrong.” Whole lot of people have been calling out how much money these companies have been hemorrhaging for years. Now that they’re trying to turn a profit, the models become unusable. I went from locked out for four hours to locked out for five days with one prompt difference. My buddy kept hitting his five-hour limit with a more complicated idea. So yeah, reading that the costs are catching up is disappointing but enlightening. They sold us a dream, and now they’re waking up from it—leaving us stranded in the nightmare.The Subscription Trap
You paid for Pro last week, right? Like me. And you’ve been wondering why Opus is literally unusable. That $200 subscription? It’s a subsidy. They priced it low to get you hooked, to make you rely on it, and now they’re pulling the rug out. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop—either inference and training costs go down significantly, or they’re screwed. But here’s the thing: even if costs drop, they won’t pass the savings on. They have no incentive to. They’ll keep the prices high until China closes the gap, and by then, you’ll be too dependent to leave.The Enshitification Process
It’s just the regular enshitification process. AI was supposed to be profitable? Ask ChatGPT how that’s possible. These companies are waking up to the reality that their margins are more like retail than tech—thin, unpredictable, and easily eroded by greed. It’s like going to McDonald’s with $5 and them telling you how many fries you get. You didn’t sign up for that. You signed up for a revolution, not a rip-off.Open Source Is the Escape Hatch
I’m just waiting for open source models and tooling to get better. Ride the subsidies as far as they go, and then when it no longer makes sense, invest in an RTX5090 or two, and run it yourself. Graphics cards are expensive, but they only cost about 15 months of Claude’s subscription. After that, your AI costs drop to electricity. Seems like a worthwhile investment—since after 15 months, you actually own the tech. Not rent it.Claude and Gemini: The W16 Engine of AI
Claude and Gemini are over 1 trillion parameters. You can run a 70 billion parameter model on a 5090. There’s no comparison. Size matters. It’s like having a supercar engine when a compact car would do. They’ll keep pushing the envelope, but the reality is, you’re paying for overkill. And they know it.The Future of AI: Pay to Play
We’re going to start getting responses like: “Excellent question. I am looking forward to answering your amazing question. We are experiencing high demand. Please pay $5 to skip to the front of the line.” The magic is gone. What’s left is a business model that treats you like a captive audience. They sold us AI as a tool to empower us, but it’s turning into a tool to exploit us.
The Question Remains
What did we actually buy? We bought a dream. A dream that turned into a subscription we can’t escape. The AI companies are waking up to the reality that they can’t sustain the fantasy—and neither can we. The moment you realize the wand is locked in a vault and the price is rising, you start looking for another way. Because the truth is, if users had to pay the actual cost, nobody would use it. And that’s the secret they don’t want you to know. The magic wasn’t in the AI—it was in the illusion. And now the illusion is cracking.