Source URL: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/9/sam-altman/#atom-everything
Source: Simon Willison’s Weblog
Title: Quoting Sam Altman
Feedly Summary: The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months, and lower prices lead to much more use. You can see this in the token cost from GPT-4 in early 2023 to GPT-4o in mid-2024, where the price per token dropped about 150x in that time period. Moore’s law changed the world at 2x every 18 months; this is unbelievably stronger.
— Sam Altman, Three Observations
Tags: generative-ai, openai, llm-pricing, ai, llms
AI Summary and Description: Yes
Summary: The text highlights the significant decrease in the cost of using AI technologies, particularly in the context of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, which is expected to influence overall adoption rates and utilization. This trend has substantial implications for professionals involved in AI security, cloud computing, and related domains.
Detailed Description: The provided text discusses the rapid decrease in costs associated with AI usage, specifically in large language model pricing. This phenomenon is compared to Moore’s Law, which traditionally described the doubling of transistor density on chips roughly every two years. The implications of such cost reductions are far-reaching:
– **Cost Reduction**: The token cost for accessing LLMs, such as from GPT-4 to GPT-4o, experienced a remarkable price drop of approximately 150x over a short period.
– **Increased Utilization**: With lower costs, the potential for widespread adoption and use of AI tools increases significantly. This suggests that more businesses and individuals will leverage AI technologies.
– **Market Dynamics**: The competitive landscape could be altered as high-performance AI becomes more accessible, leading to a surge in innovation and application across various sectors.
– **Impacts on Security**: As AI tools become more prevalent and economical, the importance of securing these platforms and the data they handle must be addressed, raising concerns about AI Security and compliance.
Overall, the trend of declining AI costs is not only an economic phenomenon but also a catalyst for transforming how AI can be integrated into existing systems, necessitating a stronger focus on security precautions and compliance measures in the context of broader adoption.