I get why some #AI companies need to resort to usage-based pricing, but from a user-centered perspective, it’s completely nonsensical. Let me explain. 🧵
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The better the AI agent, the less you need to iterate, right? Ideally, it just gets it right from the first prompt. The more you iterate, the higher your usage. Still with me? So usage-based billing = the worse the AI software, the more it costs! In which other industry would this fly? 🤔
jul 26, 2025, 12:41 am • 21 1 • view
Taxis, healthcare, plumbers, ... Quite a lot of industries, come to think of it.
jul 26, 2025, 1:10 am • 1 0 • view
Basically, any industry where you pay for time and/or resources instead of the end result, which is almost any job or contract.
jul 26, 2025, 1:11 am • 3 0 • view
Designers can do you an off the cuff design or they can spend the time to investigate what you actually need and do iterative design work
jul 26, 2025, 1:31 am • 0 0 • view
And if the AI is good you are going to iterate more because it will give you things you can explore more than you initially thought
jul 26, 2025, 1:32 am • 1 0 • view
Heh yeah I learned so much new stuff from ChatGPT by accident, just following unfamiliar terminology, it feels like the old days of looking something up on Wikipedia and ending up with 40 tabs and "what do you mean dung beetles navigate by stars??".
jul 26, 2025, 2:29 pm • 1 0 • view
In most of these jobs that’s balanced out by the fact that good professionals tend to charge a lot more per hour though.
jul 26, 2025, 3:24 am • 1 0 • view
I disagree with that. Most plumbers charge about the same because you usually need them so infrequently you don’t have that kind of “pay for quality” relationship that you need. With lawyers and stuff, you’re right.
jul 26, 2025, 6:57 am • 2 0 • view
Fair point. I was indeed thinking of lawyers, haha!
jul 26, 2025, 1:39 pm • 1 0 • view
Therapy
jul 26, 2025, 5:07 am • 2 0 • view
Dating apps
jul 26, 2025, 5:36 am • 3 0 • view
Car maintenance
jul 27, 2025, 5:30 pm • 0 0 • view
Been thinking of frontier models as utilities. I don't pay the same each month for power. Faming it that way also implies that good solutions must reduce the cost for users by leveraging SLMs in combination with more expensive LLMs. It's like adding solar or energy efficient appliances. Thoughts?
jul 26, 2025, 7:01 pm • 0 0 • view