"but it's getting cheaper and cheaper to run inference" they say. To which I say:
ok bud sure thing, this isn't a technology governed by Moore. We'll see.
But that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking specifically about people who've made a SoTA model their buddy, like the people who were sad when 4o disappeared. Users of character.ai. That sort of thing. It's going to get very, very expensive and provides very little value. People are struggling with rent. These services won't be able to survive, I hope, purely through causing psychosis in vulnerable people.
you haven't met the Whales (big spenders) in the loneliness-epidemic industry (e.g. OnlyFans and the like)
It's not like the "real women" of OnlyFans are consistently real, or women. And there's some percentage that are already AI-by-proxy. There's definitely opportunity for someone to just skip the middleman.