Until the Chinese stuff came online I was completely convinced this is just a bubble waiting to pop and nothing will come of this tech due to its absurd costs. The Chinese stuff changed this picture massively. I'm daily driving DeepSeek 4.1 flash (at API prices) and every now and then I give Opus 5.5 a try and don't notice anything missing for me.

My workflow is one where I am heavily involved in the process and I don't like giving the agent too much autonomy + I need to follow along. Opus 5.5 speak is still cause aneurysms for my brain. It also has this vibe to its prose... like it's looking down on me. This is Prolly my bias speaking though.

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unsupp0rted an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> My workflow is one where I am heavily involved in the process and I don't like giving the agent too much autonomy

For such workflows it barely matters which of a dozen models gets used.

Whereas if you're handing off all dev and no longer reading code, just making CTO-level architecture decisions, then there are only 2~3 models right now worth using, none cheap.

	▲	darkwi11ow 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Whereas if you're handing off all dev and no longer reading code, just making CTO-level architecture decisions, then there are only 2~3 models right now worth using, none cheap. I use frontier models every day and night, but not sure if the described approach is possible with any of them right now. Models still make stupid mistakes and people who do not read the code produced are bound for surprising discoveries in their codebase. Not trying to downplay the effectiveness of LLM-assisted coding and all that, but it's hard to imagine how much stupid shit i would've committed if I was not reading their output.

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pmoriarty 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I'm daily driving DeepSeek 4.1 flash (at API prices) and every now and then I give Opus 5.5 a try and don't notice anything missing for me.

I was doing the same (along with GLM 5.3 Flash) for months, and then gave Claude Sonnet 5.5 at medium effort a try. The difference was like night and day. Where both DeepSeek 4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 Flash kept making mistakes and would have to do a bunch of iterations to find and fix them, Claude Sonnet 5.5 just did it right on the first try.

In my experience, while DeepSeek 4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 Flash are a lot cheaper per token, they're just as or maybe even more expensive when you factor in all the extra tokens that are need to troubleshoot and fix their mistakes -- and even more expensive if I factor in my own time wasted doing the same, not to mention the frustration of having to deal with that.

DeepSeek 4.1 Flash also hallucinates a lot.[1]

I'm hoping all this improves with time, and the gap between the competent frontier models and open weight models narrows.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4dTq4X8bqk

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adventured an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

OpenAI's entire business is trivially profitable when you attach an ad network to ChatGPT.

Quick, someone point out the one billion user system with intent + personal data rich that doesn't result in a $100+ billion high margin ad network.

It is that simple and absolutely nothing can stop the gigantic ad networks that will be built up around personal agents.

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LunaSea 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Only if CPM can be high enough to counter balance the inference costs.

Current CPM is between $30 and $60 which is x20 to x30 more expensive than alternatives.

Now we have to wait and see if performance is also at least 30x of previous ad targeting.

	▲	adventured 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There's a trillion plus dollars (per year) of ad business up for grabs in the LLM era. Facebook is toast, sooner than later, as a business. Whatever gradually replaces/upgrades that quasi dead friends network, will be premised on AI (Zuck apparently thinks it's at least in part personal agents). In the present Meta still has a $228 billion ad business that is hyper profitable. Google + Meta = ~$650 billion hyper margin ad business. OpenAI, aka LLM as a service for the masses, is going to want to take as much of that as they can. OpenAI's active user base comes at an attention cost to the other mega services like FB or Google Search, and ultimately that attention is worth ad dollars. The question is only whether OpenAI can take it, not whether it's there at all or high value. And of course there's no guarantee that it'll be ChatGPT upon which the next great ad network is built, it will be some AI-centric business however, and likely heavily involving LLMs. Google's operating income last quarter was $40 billion. If OpenAI fails to take the mass market + ad tandem, then Google will more likely retain their position. The solution to the cost is already well understood by eg Google: the masses don't need tip of the frontier AI capabilities, and relying on Nvidia's extremely over-priced GPUs is a dumb business model. The biggest threat to OpenAI right now is Nvidia's margins, not China. Google's focus has been on high quality cheaper AI systems for a reason: they're looking to serve billions of people that have no use for what the bleeding edge offers vs a fast + good mid-tier. Google can do that in a highly profitable way.

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baq an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The thing that stops it is, ironically, personal agents. Get one to interact with the ad-driven one if you need to and filter ads out.

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Den_VR 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s the Model Welfare speaking, not your bias.

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shivsarthak34 9 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]