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Comment by frabcus | Hacker News Reader

The GPT 3.5 API is cheaper than Google Translate. And in our testing (over a year ago) was better for translation. So I assume in that case the energy use is less?

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Isn't OpenAI still operating at a loss? You can't infer much from an API bring cheaper if it's being subsidised.

GPT4 on the web is at a loss, $20/mo doesn't cover it unless someone's a rare user. GPT4 through API is not at a loss, and I doubt GPT3.5 is at a loss either.

These assertions are based off of what?

Given that you can buy a at least a couple hours worth of GPU compute at $20, it's hard to believe the average user spends that much time (specifically waiting for the response) on GPT-4 on the web every month... Not to mention that they probably have optimizations that batch together queries at the same time and make things more efficient at scale...

the assertions were based on a prompt sent to chatgpt: "are you more efficient than google translate, cost-wise?"

I've not heard any claim that they're making a loss, only that they're structured as a kinda-but-its-weird not-for-profit.

Given they tripped and fell over a money printing machine and then chose to lower their API prices, it would be pretty surprising (but not impossible) if their API prices are currently subsidised.

I doubt energy usage dictate the final price in such a way. You can't compare two widely different products from two company at completely different development stage to infer the energy usage of their product

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