Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

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> Before everyone had the same 24hr in a day which despite inequalities grounded things a bit. Now some people can run 100+ near human ability agents while others are still wondering how to get enough calories for the day. Someone in Sudan can’t afford a freakin $200 plan

I don't think this is a useful model. People struggling to survive have other priorities.

A better model for thinking about this is how cloud opened up opportunities for technical people to ship products cheaply.

Before cloud you had to hire a dedicated server and you were looking at $1000/month (in say 2000).

In 2023 if you were a non-technical person wanting to ship a software product you needed to invest some thousands of dollars to hire a software developer.

Now you can get a long way on a $30/month Codex plan

In 2000, I was 14 years old and hosting my own websites(in PHP) on a FreeBSD box at home, on a 10/10 connection, on hand me down hardware from a school sysadmin.

This was in Stockholm where we have good internet.

Certainly a skilled adult could get away with less than $100 in server costs.

You probably weren't ipv4 poor back then.

> Before cloud you had to hire a dedicated server and you were looking at $1000/month (in say 2000).

Rather: perhaps 50-100 USD per month got and still gets you a quite good server to start your project. If you were looking for bargains, you could even get a server for less.

I can ship a new feature almost every day on the $20 Codex plan. The limiting factor has always been the drive to build something. General Artificial Intelligence is here and most will continue going about their normal routine

Yep exactly.

For people like scam Altman it’s a difficult paradox: we have a ‘intelligent’ technology box and the world largely… looks the same.

He blames it on inertia lmao - as if firms are not desperately trying to increase profits and getting rid of people without having to reinvest.

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