David Rosenthal on the AI affordability crisis
strong macro case that today’s agent boom is constrained not just by capability but by unit economics; useful counterweight to “just add more loops/agents” optimism.
Gist: argues model vendors have been massively subsidizing usage to manufacture demand, but token-based pricing is now exposing the real cost structure; for serious enterprise/agentic use, compute bills can exceed human labor costs by a wide margin.
Newsletter angle: the agent era may run into a pricing wall before it hits a capability wall.
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