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points by WarmWash 3 days ago | 0 comments

You don't have to skip the plumber or the mechanic many times before $100 becomes a plainly obvious need.

It's not gonna install a shower for you, but it will confidently walk you through that leaky faucet. And I don't know if you have paid a pro recently, but they don't charge $20 for a 20 minute fix.

[–] lbreakjai 3 days ago

Indeed. On the other hand, I fixed my underfloor heating with the free claude version, so unless they remove the free tier, I still have no reason to pay for it.

It's quite a leap to assume any kind of issue would require a $100 subscription. Plumbing, mechanics, electricity ... The issues are usually far easier to trace and debug than in software, because the systems have been designed by smarter people.

You're not buying some arcane and complex solution, you're buying the convenience of not watching a couple of youtube videos or articles of someone troubleshooting the exact issue you're having.

[–] margalabargala 3 days ago

False dichotomy.

Free tiers of essentially any AI model would be able to do the same. People will use what MS bundled for free.

[–] jaykru 3 days ago

To boot even if you skip the free models, you could probably do a year's DIY assistance with 50 cents worth of GLM or Deepseek tokens. And the really costly jobs are ones where an AI assistant won't really help since, shockingly, most of the cost is hours of labor which you would have to do yourself.

[–] verdverm 3 days ago

or Google / Apple, mobile devices are the primary platform for many people

[–] WarmWash 3 days ago

I'm too old to fall for the 'ole "introductory pricing" game hah

[–] SirMaster 3 days ago

Since when have you not been able to easily find a free youtube video for this?

[–] WarmWash 3 days ago

You can't ask a YouTube video, which often is different in subtle ways to your problem, clarifying questions.

The step-by-step customized hand holding of LLMs is something totally new

[–] suddenlybananas 3 days ago

How often are you having a plumber or mechanic come?

[–] WarmWash 3 days ago

The actual question to ask is

"How often are people paying at least $600 annually for something AI can help them do instead"

and the other half is "How often can AI help someone boost their productivity over $600 in a year"

I also don't think people will even need $100 plans for this. Plans will probably land in the $60/mo range.

[–] mrweasel 3 days ago

> How often are people paying at least $600 annually for something AI can help them do instead

I'm going to need an example on this one, and examples that can't be covered equally well by a YouTube video or an 20 year old forum post. It also has to be legal, as in not violating codes for electrics or plumping, I can violate those on my own for free.

[–] jjfoooo4 3 days ago

"How often are people paying at least $600 annually for something paid AI can help them do, that free AI can't"

Muse is free. You can chat with Gemini in Google results for free.

[–] WarmWash 3 days ago

Yes, and you can take an uber across town for $5, no tip either.

[–] what 3 days ago

Most people have no interest in fixing the leaky faucet themselves, even if the already knew how and didn’t need an LLM to explain how. They’d rather pay someone and do something else with time saved.

[–] suddenlybananas 3 days ago

>"How often are people paying at least $600 annually for something AI can help them do instead"

Not that often.

[–] jplusequalt 3 days ago

>"How often are people paying at least $600 annually for something AI can help them do instead"

AI recently told me that my oven was broken because a part that doesn't exist on the oven I own was malfunctioning. A bunch of people poking around with electronics, motors, etc. because they think their AI chatbot can fix anything and everything is going to lead to injuries, deaths, and most assuredly more money in the long haul.

[–] seven-red-suns 3 days ago

leaky faucet fix is already supported by gemini on google search lol, this usecase doesn't need 100$ anthropic model. And if you think google will be bleeding on gemini you're just dead wrong

[–] the_mar 3 days ago

idk abt you but i just replaced a faucet by watching a youtube video of a middle aged guy. ya’ll are using opus 5.5 for that?