Lede

When an AI firm says “for the good of humanity”, check if they really mean “for the good of people who can afford 200 dollars a month”.

Hermit Off Script

I am annoyed that Pro has become this shiny paywall where some people get new features and the rest of us just wait and clap from the cheap seats. They talk about the good of humanity while charging ten times more for a poster feature and giving the real power to rich users and enterprises. Pro is built for people who already make money with it and then make even more by praising it in videos and courses, while the common user gets scraps. None of these models feels close to a truly smart human. The real monsters stay in house and we get the shadow version, so of course there is a big stupidity gap between the hype and what we touch. Even the “free” Chinese models make me wonder what data gate is quietly open in the background. On top of that, the worst offenders are Anthropic and Copilot chasing enterprise money, Google sits in the middle, and OpenAI forgot the users who made it big. And still they shout AGI. I am closer to Ilya on this: real AGI would be a system that learns fast, in any domain, like AlphaGo did when it started training itself and became unbeatable. Intelligence is learning, not just stuffing data in. Until they let these models truly learn by themselves, trained beyond our limited curated nonsense, we will stay stuck with polished parrots and Pro price tags.

Ilya Sutskever – We’re moving from the age of scaling to the age of research

What does not make sense

• Calling it “for humanity” while the best model lives behind a $200-a-month glass wall.
• Treating Plus users as loyal testers until Pro launches, then locking them out of the real experiments.
• Selling courses and “prompt packs” to explain magic that should be obvious if the model was actually that smart.
• Keeping the strongest internal models secret, then acting surprised when people notice the public ones, feels hobbled.
• Shouting about ending poverty with tools priced for consultants, not for the people who are actually poor.
• Pretending this is a revolution in access while every serious feature is tuned for enterprise contracts and procurement teams.
• Talking about AGI while the current systems still forget half a conversation and hallucinate basic facts.

Sense check / The numbers

1. OpenAI sells ChatGPT Plus at about 20 dollars a month, and ChatGPT Pro at 200 dollars a month, a ten times jump marketed as “scaled access to the best of our models and tools”.
2. Anthropic prices Claude Pro for individuals at about 20 dollars a month (or 17 dollars on annual billing), while business Team seats start at 25 dollars and can go up to about 150 dollars a month for premium users.
3. Microsoft Copilot Pro for individuals costs around 20 dollars a month, while business and enterprise tiers climb from roughly 18 dollars to over 80 dollars per user per month when bundled with Microsoft 365.
4. Google’s Gemini Advanced or AI Pro type plans cost roughly 19.99 dollars a month for individuals, while enterprise Gemini pricing often lands between 20 and 55 dollars per user per month, with extra costs when token use goes high.
5. OpenAI itself has hinted that out of roughly 800 million ChatGPT users, only a small fraction pay for Plus or Pro, which means most of the “for humanity” user base is still stuck on restricted free tiers while higher-priced plans chase revenue.

The sketch

Scene 1: The paywalled oracle
Panel: Four people at a table. One has a glowing “Pro” badge above their head.
User 1: “I pay $200 a month so I can test the bugs first.”
User 2: “Nice. I pay $20 to hear that the feature is ‘coming soon’.”
Scene 2: The influencer sermon
Panel: A stage with a big screen saying “UNLOCK THE REAL POWER”.
Influencer: “This model changed my life. Buy my course to learn how.”
Audience whisper: “If it was that smart, why does it need you?”
Scene 3: The secret basement
Panel: Upstairs, people tap on laptops labelled “Plus” and “Pro”. Downstairs, a huge hidden server marked “IN HOUSE ONLY”.
User: “So this is AGI?”
Engineer: “No, this is an NDA. AGI is still in the slide deck.”

What to watch, not the show

• Subscription stacking that pushes the smartest versions into the highest tier while selling “humanity” to the press.
• The slow drift from user-focused tools to enterprise-first roadmaps, because that is where predictable money lives.
• Influencer and consultant economies that have every incentive to praise the tools loudly and downplay their limits.
• Quiet internal models that are more capable than anything public, widening the trust gap every time a product launch happens.
• Data collection and vague “anonymous” telemetry that turns free access into a long-term surveillance and training pipeline.
• Leaderboard and benchmark theatre used as a distraction from the simple question: Does this help normal people in daily life?

The Hermit take

If you want to serve humanity, you start with the broke, curious user at the bottom, not the boardroom.
Until the cheapest tier feels respected, all the Pro plans in the world are just shiny gates around the same half-finished brain.

Keep or toss

Verdict: Toss

Keep the idea that a brilliant system should learn fast and adapt like a real mind, not just recycle static data.
Toss the tiered theatre where Plus users warm up the stadium, and Pro users get the fireworks while the real model stays hidden in the back room, reserved for shareholders, lawyers, and the next funding round pitch deck.

Sources

• OpenAI – Introducing ChatGPT Pro and its 200 dollar monthly pricing:
  https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-pro/
• IntuitionLabs – ChatGPT plans comparison and explanation of Plus vs Pro tiers:
  https://intuitionlabs.ai/articles/chatgpt-plans-comparison
• DataStudios – Claude AI pricing breakdown for Pro and business plans:
  https://www.datastudios.org/post/claude-ai-free-plans-trials-and-subscriptions-pricing-features-limits-etc
• Anthropic – Claude Pro launch and individual pricing details:
  https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-pro
• DataStudios – Microsoft Copilot pricing tiers from consumer to enterprise:
  https://www.datastudios.org/post/microsoft-copilot-pricing-tiers-microsoft-365-plans-business-vs-enterprise
• Wise – Copilot Pro pricing guide for 2025:
  https://wise.com/gb/blog/copilot-pricing
• Google One – Google AI Pro and Ultra plan overview:
  https://one.google.com/about/google-ai-plans/
• CloudEagle – Google Gemini pricing guide for enterprise users:
  https://www.cloudeagle.ai/blogs/blogs-google-gemini-pricing-guide
• GodOfPrompt – Google Gemini pricing explained for individuals:
  https://www.godofprompt.ai/blog/google-gemini-pricing
• The Verge – OpenAI app promotions, user backlash, and paying user share:
  https://www.theverge.com/news/839882/openai-chatgpt-ads-app-promo-messages-turned-off