“Despite everybody talking about it endlessly for three god damn years, LLMs lack the kind of obvious, replicable, industrially-necessary outcomes that make a 3x, 4x or 10x price increase tenable.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
LLMs do not produce the clear, repeatable, industrially necessary results that would justify a 3x to 10x price increase.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, Why Are We Still Doing This?, paragraph 58.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-why-are-we-still-doing-this-42d818-a1
We recorded 33 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2026-03-17. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- for three god damn years
- LLMs lack
- obvious, replicable, industrially-necessary outcomes
- a 3x, 4x or 10x price increase tenable
Our interpretation
- The ordinary economic reading is that repeatable business benefits would not justify paying three, four or ten times the contemporary price for equivalent LLM usage.
- A useful deployment alone does not establish affordability at those multiples. Benefits must be compared with model charges, implementation, supervision, error correction and alternatives.
- I treat the preceding three years as the approximate observation window, ending on the post date.
- Industrial necessity means a material operational use with demonstrated business value, not literal impossibility of working without an LLM.
Counts as supported if: Representative deployment evidence shows that repeatable business benefits are insufficient to sustain the named price multiples after relevant costs.
Counts as contradicted if: Documented, repeatable industrial deployments demonstrate sufficient attributable net benefits to remain economically worthwhile at the named price multiples.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
There is evidence of useful deployment and evidence of slowdown in a specific setting. Neither settles whether repeatable industrial benefits justify threefold to tenfold prices. The cited records lack the matched benefits, usage and full costs needed for that calculation.
Limitations
- Klarna's operational results are company-reported.
- METR's original study concerns a specific developer population and tool generation.
- Industrial necessity and the relevant price baseline require interpretation.
Evidence (3 items)
Context only: Klarna Group plc,
averaged two minutes
Why it matters here: Klarna reports a concrete deployment benefit. Resolution time alone does not establish the net return at three to ten times model prices.
- Publisher
- Klarna Group plc
- Kind of source
- Regulatory filing
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: METR,
19% longer
Why it matters here: The study supplies evidence against assuming productivity gains in every coding setting. Its narrow population and lack of a price-multiple analysis prevent it from establishing the broad claim.
- Where
- Opening summary
- Publisher
- METR
- Kind of source
- Independent measurement
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: METR,
very weak evidence
Why it matters here: METR's follow-up discusses possible greater speedups but explains that selection effects weaken the estimate. This limits extrapolation from its earlier slowdown finding.
- Publisher
- METR
- Kind of source
- Independent measurement
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
Deployment-level records showing attributable benefits, actual model charges and other costs, with sensitivity calculations at three, four and ten times the baseline price and evidence that results repeat.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, Why Are We Still Doing This?
Despite everybody talking about it endlessly for three god damn years, LLMs lack the kind of obvious, replicable, industrially-necessary outcomes that make a 3x, 4x or 10x price increase tenable.
- Where
- paragraph 58
- Published
- 2026-03-17
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-why-are-we-still-doing-this-42d818-a1: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment wyea-why-are-we-still-doing-this-42d818-a1.