AI subscription costs are changing and not in the direction anyone hoped. The pay-by-workload model is replacing the all-you-can-eat subscription, and it looks a lot like the early internet.

Carmi Levy maps the problem precisely. You replace a fifty-thousand-dollar human assistant with AI at fifteen thousand. The AI company doubles the price. Features move behind paywalls. The rules change six months in. You have spent the budget and you own nothing, including the workflow you built around it.

The credits problem is the daily version of the same issue. You run out mid-morning. Work stops. Re-editing a mistake costs the same as getting it right. There is no gas pump equivalent that tells you what any of this actually costs.

Topics: AI subscription costs, digital ownership, AI credits, pay-by-workload, cloud computing

GUEST: Carmi Levy

Originally aired on2026-05-27