Frontier AI faces pricing reckoning as token volume explodes 25-fold — mid-tier models deliver 90% of flagship capability at one-sixth the cost

Reply to Frontier AI faces pricing reckoning as token volume explodes 25-fold — mid-tier models deliver 90% of flagship capability at one-sixth the cost on Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:19:33 GMT

yogthos@lemmy.ml — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:19:33 GMT

Indeed, the low end is what I'm most excited about. Qwen 3.8 27b is already comparable to Opus 4.5, so if next version is as good as Fable, that's good enough for vast majority of things people need to do. And while I'm really thankful that Chinese companies choose to release their models in the open, its far better to run your whole tool chain locally end to end.

Reply to Frontier AI faces pricing reckoning as token volume explodes 25-fold — mid-tier models deliver 90% of flagship capability at one-sixth the cost on Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:02:56 GMT

chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:02:56 GMT

Even the low tier models have seen huge ongoing improvements, both much smarter and much faster, on the exact same consumer hardware. Great news for anyone who doesn't want to see these big US corporations form an AI compute oligopoly.

Reply to Frontier AI faces pricing reckoning as token volume explodes 25-fold — mid-tier models deliver 90% of flagship capability at one-sixth the cost on Sun, 06 Sep 2026 16:38:48 GMT

audaxdreik@pawb.social — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 16:38:48 GMT

Absolutely hilarious. Another race to the bottom. Enshittifying the shit. Oh did you think as a consumer you were even gonna get the primo slop? The choice slop? No, you get the affordable grade slop that will continue to be ratcheted down as the price squeeze towards profitability continues.