Source: Every
As frontier AI labs stop subsidizing cheap compute to drive adoption, users must now justify each query against real costs. AI shifts from experimental playground to utilitarian tool optimized for efficiency rather than exploration. This favors power users and established workflows over casual experimentation, likely concentrating AI value capture among those with high-stakes problems—knowledge workers, developers, analysts—while consumer AI adoption may plateau unless vendors can justify pricing through genuine productivity gains rather than discounted wonder.