AI's Economics Don't Make Sense

The big news is simple: Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, the AI coding helper, is ditching its easy flat-rate feel and moving toward pay-for-what-you-use pricing in 2026. The company says today’s AI can do longer, heavier jobs and costs more to run, so the old setup no longer works. But in the comments, the real show is the civil war over whether this proves the whole AI boom is shaky, or whether critics are just being dramatic again.

Some readers cheered Ed Zitron’s gloomy warning that AI companies can’t keep eating these costs forever, basically saying, finally, the bill is coming due. One commenter was practically lighting candles for the day runaway spending gets punished. But others came in swinging, accusing the article of overselling the crisis and acting like nothing ever gets cheaper in tech. Another pushed back hard on the money math, saying AI companies may still have huge margins and that the article treats every generated answer like a money-losing disaster. And then there was the spiciest meta-drama of all: one reader claiming they’ve “lost some respect” for Zitron because he seems to be slowly backing away from his older, harsher anti-AI stance.

The jokes were sharp too. Zitron’s own crack about a Microsoft executive showing up with a baseball bat set the tone: this wasn’t a calm accounting discussion, it was spreadsheet doom with popcorn energy. The mood? Half “AI is cooked,” half “your numbers are bad,” and 100% comment-section bloodsport.