Originally Posted By: Planobilly
I think we will soon need to get out our checkbook if we want to access ChatGPT.

Nah. How much does it cost to run a Google search or get a Facebook account? The new software megabusiness model doesn't depend on withholding access.

Besides, ChatGPT/OpenAI wants the interactions to learn from. When you talk to it, it also talks to you (as Nietzsche said) and for all we know subtly manipulates you to fill in areas it's interested in. Never mind typing, think of all the stuff people paste into it, gobs and gobs of text it would never see otherwise. Free users are a gold mine of freely provided data.

I believe monetization will come from things like: third-party companies embedding the GPT-3 AI engine in full-on commercial products built on top of the API. Which is already happening; see this Wikipedia article, at "Applications". That's the sort of service OpenAI will be able to charge companies huge amounts for.

As for ChatGPT itself, remember also, for all its dazzling awesomeness, the service is ultimately unreliable and comes with no guarantees of any kind — including of availability, as you're currently seeing.