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Notes -
Strongly agree on this. Deepseek V4 already brought down the output cost per million tokens below $1 (they say it's a promotion, but they keep extending it) for a model that's perfectly good enough for all "normal person" uses. I expect further optimisations will bring this cost down to $0.01 or so per million output tokens (with two more zeros in front for the input cost) within 5 years or so for models that are as capable as the stuff out there today (see how Qwen 3.6 27B today which you can run locally if you have a decent GPU outperforms Opus 4.0 from less than 12 months ago and which used to cost $75 per million output tokens).
For the vast majority of tasks you don't need the smartest model out there, you just need one which is good enough, and once the baseline for "good enough" is established Chinese competition will drive down the marginal price for "good enough" tokens to the point that some companies are going to be left nursing huge losses.
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