I've been using the free VSCode editor on linux, and it has recently started hinting that I ought to install some version of Copilot. I'm an old retired guy who just programs hobby stuff for myself, and I try to separate my leisure activities from the world of sordid materialism. I would rather not deal with AI, as I use my computing projects to track the normal decline of my mental abilities now in progress. I reason that Microsoft, or its github arm, wants to find some way to turn me into a revenue source by either requiring me to use something like that and then making it cost something, or requiring me to use something like that and then making me give them more information about myself in order to use it. How long until that happens?

The more people they get addicted to LLMs, the higher they can raise prices when they want to—not to mention, normalizing it makes them more likely to survive copyright infringement lawsuits.

Microsoft has already used LLM integration to raise prices by force-upselling Copilot to M365 users[0], and of course they are still losing outrageous money on this tech every month.

In a sense, recouping losses via price hikes is the best scenario. If good LLMs truly become as commodified as some people want everyone to believe (meaning MS and especially smaller VC-funded companies in the hypespace would not be able to profit as much as they need to break even), the avenues for financial gain become worse for us—think turning all generative ML-driven output into a two-sided marketplace, where advertisers get to pay them so that the growing generation’s future chatbot therapists inject whatever feelings help them sell more.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYVPThx7yss