Oct 22, 2026, 10:57 AMWhen people say 'this is possible only with LLM-generated programming' what they often actually means is 'this is possible only with massively subsidised automation'. An LLM is probably not the most efficient way of getting to the end point, but when the compute for the LLM is subsidised by a factor of 10-100x, if the other technique requires 20% as much compute it's still vastly more expensive if you can't burn someone else's money on it.
@david_chisnall @lune right, plus also the pressure from bosses going "why aren't you using the Go Faster Machine"
Oct 22, 2026, 5:55 PM@jcoglan @david_chisnall this is all fair! but I guess I should clarify I was aiming for "I'm not sure if I can blame LLMbros for this PHP exploit and the way it was disclosed, but I want to because it's happened before."
@david_chisnall @lune @jcoglan you can chop down some big trees when you have a trillion dollar chainsaw
Oct 22, 2026, 6:06 PM@david_chisnall @lune @jcoglan brb thinking about how much securitized private credit is subsidizing generation of bad knockoff photoshop lawsuit magnets, and what the clawback process is going to look like.
@david_chisnall @lune @jcoglan
Who's saying such things?
The money behind LLM tech at this point is mostly institutional, Blackrock, Pimco etc. Not subsidies
Oct 22, 2026, 6:28 PM@tuban_muzuru what he's saying is that the price of tokens is well below of the providers' cost of tokens
With respect, this entire LLM phenomenon is a Gold Rush.
Yes, you're right, under one definition of cost. Yet marginal serving cost (GPUs, power, datacenter rent per token served). Here price is probably well above cost.
@david_chisnall @lune @jcoglan this is the part that's been boggling my mind! Every time when an impressive "see! LLM can do *this* now!" happens - there's inevitably prior art. Which seems consistent with how LLMs work in general
It's just traditionally all these problems have been deemed too expensive by those in charge of money
But somehow these corporations decided to burn orders of magnitude *more* of money and make it everyone else's problem AND they keep getting rewarded for it!? WTF!?
@david_chisnall @lune @jcoglan Isn't it amazing what can be achieved when you task what is a supercomputer at a problem? Subsidised monkeys and typewriters on a scale not seen before. Or fling enough shit against a wall and eventually a visually appealing pattern will appear.
@david_chisnall @lune @jcoglan
Do you have sources for the claimed subsidy size?
From what I can tell, API payment is profitable to the large providers, Enterprise seats are profitable or neutral, and paid consumer subscription plans are at most 2x subsidized.
Source: I ran models similar to this for a smaller company for a couple of years.