My AI Dealer Raised His Prices
The first hit was free, but now the sparkly little icons in my apps are starting to look expensive. Is this the part where the withdrawal kicks in?
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Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
'''I knew this day would come.
The first time you saw it, you smiled, didn't you? That little Gemini sparkle in the Google search bar. The ChatGPT spiral in your writing app. The Copilot ribbon snaking its way into your code editor. A free helper! A tiny, clever ghost in the machine, finishing your sentences, writing your emails, debugging your life. A gift.
It felt good. Too good. It was the first free hit, slid into your pocket by a dealer who knows his product. They all do it: the green spiral, the purple sparkle, the orange asterisk. They wallpapered our digital world with syringe-shaped buttons, injecting their magic straight into the Word ribbon, the Notion slash menu, the Gmail compose window. We didn't even have to ask.
The $20 "Just this once"
And now? Now that you can't imagine writing a performance review or a Tinder bio without a little help? Now comes the notification. "Upgrade to Pro".
Twenty bucks a month. What is that? Two sad desk lunches? The price of a few lattes for a superpower? It’s a steal.
So you pull out your credit card. You're in. You need it. You can't go back to the old way, staring at a blank page like a caveman staring at a cold fire. You are an augmented human now. And they know it.
This is how the trap closes. The price was never $20. The price is your dependence. Once every email you write has been touched by Claude, once every report you generate has been blessed by Gemini, once every line of code has been whispered by Copilot, the meter starts spinning for real.
Today it's $20 a month. Next year it will be $200. And one day, a million tokens will cost more than a barrel of crude oil. Once the whole world is hooked, they can name their price. And we will pay it.
Don't believe me? Try turning it all off for a week. Your turn. '''