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Comment by Ucalegon | Hacker News Reader

Man, expecting the minimal from companies who are supposed to deliver a pro... there is no SLA for any this, so you are right.

Also, why is there no SLA?

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You’re not getting a worthwhile sla on a subscription at this rate. What are you going to get? A few dollars? An sla isn’t useful unless it actually bites for the provider and actually compensates the customer. And it costs money - how much are you willing to spend for this insurance?

because there isn't one and people still paid for it.

My clients demand one, so there is one.

Imagine if people were like your clients.

If they were, they wouldn't buy your product without an SLA. But they're not.

Because this is ultimately a beta service. The whole industry is.

Wait, where is there a 'beta' tag to something that they are charging real money for? Why is this software any different than any other software and we should completely give away our rights as a consumer to ensure what we pay for is delivered?

I think the parent is saying that one should be aware that the whole LLM industry is still in an experimental stage and far from mature. What you want isn’t what’s being offered. I agree that there should be higher standards, but what we currently have is an arms race. The consequence is to factor that into the value proposition and maybe not rely too much on it.

SLAs should be standard for any paid service, especially on the enterprise side, but also on the consumer side. Being immature as a company does not excuse a lack of service delivery.

Not every customer, even a paying customer, demands reliability at a particular level. Market segmentation tends to address those situations: pay more, get more.

> pay more, get more

Users on $200 plan complaining, already at max level of subscription, I don't think a $200 subscription should make you feel like you are getting unfair advantage. Like restricting claude -p to API ... after I paid so much? Moderate use should not do that. I am not running it batch mode on a million inputs.

'I don't want to hold companies to account for failing to deliver services, therefore I think everyone else should live by my permissive "standards".'

They can be held to account when they fail to deliver what they promise! But what is promised for delivery is what's in the Terms of Service (i.e. the agreement). Nothing more. If it's not in there, you can't hold them to account for it.

Yes, that's the problem.

It's too easy for companies to fail to provide their service as long as they never promise to provide their service.

> It's too easy for companies to fail to provide their service as long as they never promise to provide their service.

I don't even know what this means. You can't make anyone work for free, nor dictate the terms of what kind of work someone will do without their consent. I assume you are not pro-slavery.

I'll make a very simple example.

The service at mcdonald's is providing food for money.

When their ice cream machine is broken, they fail to provide part of their service.

I'm not saying anything about "making" them do anything. I'm just calling out their failure and saying it's a bad thing.

You didn't merely call out their failure. You said it was "too easy," implying something more, like they owe you something. It's a pretty entitled point of view.

I don't think it's "entitled" to want companies to put some effort into avoiding those failures.

If the government did something, we could think of it as similar to passing inspection.

The other way to look at things is that the market isn't varied and competitive enough to punish the companies that fail this way.

They don't have to "owe me" anything for me to desire a different balance. My desire is fine.

"[W]ant[ing] companies to put some effort into avoiding ... failures" is not the same as "hold[ing] them to account". The former is "this sucks and I don't like it." The latter is "punish them or force them to do what I want!"--i.e., some sort of legal remedy.

If you can point to a consumer targeted service that provides and keeps their SLAs, I’ll be impressed.

What right as a consumer do you have that is pertinent here, other than to have the vendor adhere to the terms of the agreement you have with them?

Anthropic has many customers despite the fact that they have occasional problems. They’re not suing Anthropic because Anthropic isn’t promising in its agreement something they can’t deliver.

I think you’re reading into the agreement something that isn’t there, and that’s the cause of your confusion.

I am not reading into an agreement, I am saying there is no agreement to be found to ensure service delivery and the associated liability that would come for any SLA. Also, where is the Anthorpic SLA for Enterprise?

Does it exist?

Just because people pay for things doesn't mean they know or understand what they are paying for. Nor is there the legal precedence to actually understand where the rub lies or how that impacts business.

> Just because people pay for things doesn't mean they know or understand what they are paying for.

I believe, respectfully, that’s precisely what is happening in this thread because you keep complaining about the absence of an SLA that was never in the agreement, as though it is—or is supposed to be—there, and therefore the existence of some “rights” that would flow from that.

There are no SLAs, in any agreement, thats the problem.

We're back to square one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47741877

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