Yes, which I say as a subscriber and donor to 404media (they do very good journalism work imho) and someone who leans more towards AI skeptic while being a heavy user in specific domains. "It's not a business, it's a feature."

Durable storage + sufficiently performant local LLM hardware + appropriate models [last two are wildcards and hard to predict the forward curve imho] = this experience locally. Remember when mobile video hardware acceleration wasn't good? And now, it is very good.

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sc68cal an hour ago | parent [-]

None of that has any relevance to what is happening right now. Character.ai is in chapter 11 bankruptcy, and "oh they should have done it differently, and 404media isn't taking into consideration a completely unproven hypothetical technology that wouldn't have bankrupted them" is not a useful discussion, nor a good critique of their coverage.

	▲	toomuchtodo an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Title assertion: > Character.ai's Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don't Work My comments: "I don't agree, here is why." This specific model doesn't appear to be economically sustainable and/or commercially viable. That is a reasonable statement and assertion, based on the evidence presented. Does not mean the economics of AI in general do not work. That's a very broad statement! Nuance, words mean things. Therefore, we should ask ourselves and discuss, "Under what circumstances could\|would the economics work? Are there any? Or are there none?" We are discussing the problem space! Be more curious.
	▲	verdverm an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Some (most?) journalist skimp on the nuance. Character.ai is not representative of the entire Ai ecosystem and market. There are a lot of other factors that played a role here than the Ai economics themselves.