These companies are continually training new models. This is not a long term amortized cost, it's actual COGS.
Yeah, sure you can ignore the cost of purchasing the building for the restaurant for most profitability calculations, but if every year or two you were tearing down your old building and building a new one, you better believe that has to be in your profitability calculations.
Re:How the AI Bubble Bursts
by s1artibartfast on Monday March 30, 2026 @12:34PM
(#47576469)
I think the relevant question to define the counterfactual is what would happen if they stopped training.
If you can simply not remodel your restaurant and keep making money, then yeah, it makes sense to call it profitable.
Yeah it should be factored in, but it’s a different set of implications for long term sustainability. They don’t actually need to test and optimize a new menu every day or week. If they decide to just stick to the same one longer they can get way more return from each dollar spent on development. It’s just that right now the rate of improvement you get with training is really high and nobody can afford to fall behind their competition.