Will Small Models Run Free? Data Value vs. Compute Costs
JoshuaJBouw · x · 2026-08-19
Commenting on a new service, the author wonders if running small models will become cheap enough for big services to offer for free.
The logic is that the data collected might be more valuable to sell to LLM training companies than charging users, or that these services are accumulating data to train their own models. This speculation highlights the shifting economics between data value and compute costs.
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