Not everyone can afford the tokens
I’m writing this during the time Anthropic is raising the cost of tokens and living in Vietnam, where our currency is not very strong, and many people still don’t have food on the table here, much less money to spend on vibe coding.
I’m thinking of the undergraduates in Computer Science/Information Technology, or any undergradates out there who wants to adapt to this AI age. How much money do they need to learn AI? The best Claude subscription would cost them $200 a month, and other subscriptions combined would probably cost them the same amount of money. And I have yet to talk about the courses, because not everyone can learn on their own or afford the f*ck-around-and-find-out way of learning.
And what do we have? For a young person entering the workforce, I believe the best they can earn would be around 10 million VND a month (some have even less, and a minority might not get any compensation at all). That would be around $380/month, and yes, compared to those in the US or any other country out there, that’s disturbingly low. After rent, food, utilities, bills, how much do they have left? No, don’t leave, because we have yet to talk about saving up.
And we are expecting the kids to know how to use AI? Even when they have yet to learn the ropes? Because many of them are still looking for jobs: They wake up early to work part-time jobs, save every penny for a quick lunch by skipping breakfast, while searching for more long-term positions. It’s a miracle that they still have time and energy to learn the fundamentals and prepare for jobs.
Are we helping them enough? Or maybe some of us are just blatantly telling them things like:
“You come from a nowhere university, you are ngmi”.
“Learn how to use AI or you will be left behind”.
“AI will do all the work, there is no use”.
I despise fear-mongering. What would we gain from spreading fear and worries? Can people sell more of their bullshit online courses on how to generate Ghibli images from profile pictures? Probably yes, and I will despise those kinds of people even more, even if they make a lot of money.
What we need is more encouragement than ever. More encouragement for the undergraduates, more hope for them for a better future where they will grow from experiences. The new generations are just getting smarter and smarter, more resourceful than ever before, and we are lucky to have such people to guide us in the future.
The least we can do is to show optimism. Show them the future where they thrive, financially and intelectually. Hope is scarce these days, but it’s not oil because we can manufacture them easily by being a nice person.
And hey, maybe lower the AI cost? Or make local LLM infrastructure more affordable? But I don’t know, I’m just a guy who enjoys learning stuff.
