Ok. We’re deviating off the point of LLM profitability here and have driven this conversation off into the weeds. So I’ll make this one last comment, and then I’m done. This debate has been interesting but exhausting.

Final counterpoints:

• $3.5mil is the cost of the connection footed by the energy provider and tax payer, and provides no ROI to investors like NVIDIA, hence no profit to LLM and “AI” in general.
• As far as I can tell, the biggest method of external income for LLM companies are subscriptions and there is simply not enough uptake in subscriptions to get ROI, so they try to force consumers to use it which ends up pushing away your customer base since you’re taking away their power of choice.
• For them to obtain ROI, literally the entire planet needs to use it which isn’t feasible because, as a consumer, you need income to consume and the larger driver of investment into LLMs is to reduce the cost of labour.

LLMs have long since gone beyond the scope of interesting science project to something driven by pure parasitic greed.