It doesn't cost $600 in Anthropic credits though. It probably costs a few cents (definitely <$1).
I do understand the general point you're trying to make, but you can't overestimate the cost of tokens by a few orders of magnitude and still expect the logic to hold.
But humanity is gaining hugely productive (in financial terms) assets. It doesn't matter if the entity or its investors that created the asset goes kaboom.
Most of the investors and companies that built the rail network went bust. The iron remained.
Most of the investors and companies that built the telecom network went bust. The fiber remained.
Most of the investors and companies that are building models will go bust. The files (open weight or transfered to new owners for pennies) will remain, and yield economic benefits for as long as we flow current through them.
Iron and fiber are durable and last for decades. Data centers (where the current flows for inference) consist of hardware that becomes obsolete within 5 to 10 years.
The question is can improvements in the hardware both in cost and performance outpace the increased demands on the LLMs and their future derivatives.
They might even have .... a test.
reply