Then why are AI plans still so super expensive, and AI spending going through the roof, while all the subsidies are ending?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

AI gets cheaper, people use it everywhere. Google searches, for example. Now we want to crack math problems and spend weeks with unreleased models.

If you used GPT-2, it'd be incredibly cheap. You basically can't use it for anything and it's simple to serve.

The cost per fixed level of intelligence is dropping, but we're also getting dramatically more intelligent models.

Because models are only getting better at a rate of 10% per year, people always want the best quality possible. You can get SotA performance from a year ago for a fraction of the cost, but why would you use Opus 4.5 when you can use Opus 5.5?

Reddit is full of people complaining how they burn their 200$ sub in half an hour by starting ten Max sub agents. That’s to say, many people just don’t know what they’re doing.

Because it's increasingly useful and the thing you are substituting (human time) is much more expensive.

To pay for the training of the models which are getting bigger and more expensive. So intelligence is getting cheaper overall but the need for ever-increasing intelligence can't be sated.'

Apart from what others said about using more intelligent models instead of cheaper ones, token usage is also increasing a lot. Classic Jevons paradox

At least for me the Claude plans seem like an incredible deal and I never hit my limit.