We have a bunch of engineers paying money to open loot boxes and they get visibly upset when they run out of tokens.

LLM companies have done an absolutely brilliant job of figuring out how to burn more tokens quickly, couch it as “more advanced” and people throw money at them.

I realize this wasn’t the thrust of your point, but tangentially, we fucked it up so badly because people desperately want to ignore this bit, and instead of looking at these tools analytically, there are the ardent defenders and the staunchly opposed… much like every other topic under the sun these days.

I use the free stuff work pays for, and I’ve never hit any token limit or anything like that. But I’m also trying extremely hard to ensure my skillsets don’t atrophy. I just use the web interface and ask questions. I have no interest in tying my development experience directly into an LLM, not after what I’ve seen at work over the last few weeks.