It's never this clean, but it is direction-ally correct. If I make $300k / year, and I can tell that chatgpt already saves me hours or even days per month, $200 is a laughable amount. If I feel like pro is even slightly better, it's worth $200 just to know that I always have the best option available.
Heck, it's probably worth $200 even if I'm not confident it's better just in case it is.
For the same reason I don't start with the cheapest AI model when asking questions and then switch to the more expensive if it doesn't work. The more expensive one is cheap enough that it doesn't even matter, and $200 is cheap enough (for a certain subsection of users) that they'll just pay it to be sure they're using the best option.
That's only true if your time is metered by the hour; and the vast majority of roles which find some benefit from AI, at this time, are not compensated hourly. This plan might be beneficial to e.g. CEO-types, but I question who at OpenAI thought it would be a good idea to lead their 12 days of hollowhype with this launch, then; unless this is the highest impact release they've got (one hopes it is not).
>This plan might be beneficial to e.g. CEO-types, but I question who at OpenAI thought it would be a good idea to lead their 12 days of hollowhype with this launch, then; unless this is the highest impact release they've got (one hopes it is not).
In previous multi-day marketing campaigns I've ran or helped ran (specifically on well-loved products), we've intentionally announced a highly-priced plan early on without all of its features.
Two big benefits:
1) Your biggest advocates get to work justifying the plan/product as-is, anchoring expectations to the price (which already works well enough to convert a slice of potential buyers)
2) Anything you announce afterward now gets seen as either a bonus on top (e.g. if this $200/mo plan _also_ includes Sora after they announce it...), driving value per price up compared to the anchor; OR you're seen as listening to your audience's criticisms ("this isn't worth it!") by adding more value to compensate.
I work from home and my time is accounted for by way of my productive output because I am very far away from a CEO type. If I can take every Wednesday off because I’ve gained enough productivity to do so, I would happily pay $200/mo out of my own pocket to do so.
$200/user/month isn’t even that high of a number in the enterprise software world.
Employers might be willing to get their employees a subscription if they believe it makes their employees they are paying $$$$$ more X% productive. (Where X% of their salary works out to more than $2400/year)
There is only so much time in the day. If you have a job where increased productivity translates to increases income (not just hourly metered jobs) then you will see a benefit.
> cheapest AI model when asking questions and then switch to the more expensive if it doesn't work.
The thing is, more expensive isn't guaranteed to be better. The more expensive models are better most of the time, but not all the time. I talk about this more in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42313401#42313990
Since LLMs are non-deterministic, there is no guarantee that GPT-4o is better than GPT-4o mini. GPT-4o is most likely going to be better, but sometimes the simplicity of GPT-4o mini makes it better.
As you say, the more expensive models are better most of the time.
Since we can't easily predict which model will actually be better for a given question at the time of asking, it makes sense to stick to the most expensive/powerful models. We could try, but that would be a complex and expensive endeavor. Meanwhile, both weak and powerful models are already too cheap to meter in direct / regular use, and you're always going to get ahead with the more powerful ones, per the very definition of what "most of the time" means, so it doesn't make sense to default to a weaker model.
Heck, it's probably worth $200 even if I'm not confident it's better just in case it is.
For the same reason I don't start with the cheapest AI model when asking questions and then switch to the more expensive if it doesn't work. The more expensive one is cheap enough that it doesn't even matter, and $200 is cheap enough (for a certain subsection of users) that they'll just pay it to be sure they're using the best option.