It seems AI is becoming one of the most volatile and expensive dependencies in modern systems, and most organizations aren’t prepared for what comes next. I recently wrote an article for Modern CISO on AI cost volatility, offering observations and recommendations to mitigate this risk.
Token Ransom and High Cost
For years, we’ve been told to prepare for the cost of intelligence to crash to zero.
The narrative pushed in this tweet by Logan Kilpatrick is something I’ve called out in the past for its sheer ridiculousness. But many are seeing the light in the last few weeks. Everywhere you turn, AI services are getting more expensive. Every day, new providers are making announcements. One example below is from GitHub Copilot’s new pricing.
Even the all-you-can-eat AI buffet for $20 a month was always a myth. This was part of a larger narrative pushed by influencers, futurists, and AI leaders, but this narrative always made dollars and no sense.
What happens when you deploy solutions using these cutting-edge foundation models into production environments? You may end up with a dependency where you have a choice. Pay more or have the solution stop working. In the article, I refer to this as a token ransom.
Think of this as a token ransom. It’s scary to consider how the ransomware of the future may actually be an inflated token cost.
If companies aren’t prepared for these scenarios, they carry significant operational risk. In the article, I break down the issues with more examples and provide recommendations on how to start addressing them.
You can read the full write-up for Modern CISO here. Although framed toward security leaders, the advice is applicable beyond the cybersecurity space.
One interesting outcome of these price increases is that companies are very concerned. It seems no amount of security and reliability issues dissuaded these companies from chucking AI into everything, but the skyrocketing cost of AI may. I’ve heard far more grumblings about cost than security issues. Only time will tell.