GitHub Copilot Costs
In my last post I spoke about how I’ve been gradually adopting AI-assisted coding. I didn’t think much about costs because the tool has been improving over time and it’s come to a point where I acknowledge I rely on assistants, and by doing manual coding my productivity would take a major hit. For now I feel every euro spent has been worth it, so I mostly ignore the money side. However, how can you not notice the humongous investments being made in datacenters, the crazy valuations of companies yet to turn a profit, and the worrying news of layoffs by the big American companies? That makes you think about how this frenzy is justified from a financial standpoint; the LLMs themselves are a marvel. How are those companies going to make all that money back? Sure, although I’m a developer, I’m a European in a low-income country. I’ll surely pay some euros each month on tools, but I don’t see coders around here spending in ways that would make the financial side add up. Maybe in the US things are different and devs are spending like $1000/month on AI tools, but I don’t plan to increase my spending much and I don’t think my employer is either. Furthermore, from the laypeople side, I don’t know a single person paying for an AI assistant. But honestly, in Spain we’re very frugal; the free versions should be barely functional before anyone decides to spend even €10 on software. ...