I mean this in what I hope will be taken in the most helpful way possible: you should update your thinking to at least imagine that intelligent thoughtful people see some value in ChatGPT. Or alternately that some of the people who see value in ChatGPT are intelligent and thoughtful. That is, aim for the more intelligent "Interesting, why do so many people like this? Where is it headed? Given that, what is worth doing now, and what's worth waiting on?" over the "This doesn't meet my standards in my domain, ergo people are getting scammed."
I'll pay $200 a month, no problem; right now o1-preview does the work for me of a ... somewhat distracted graduate student who needs checking, all for under $1 / day. It's slow for an LLM, but SUPER FAST for a grad student. If I can get a more rarely distracted graduate student that's better at coding for $7/day, well, that's worth a try. I can always cancel.
I think you did make some strong inferences about others when you said "it's a con." But I'm actually not interested in the other people, or defending against an ad hominem attack - I'm comfortable making my own purchase decisions.
My intent was to say "you seem like a smart person, but you seem to have a blind spot here, might benefit you to stay more open minded."
I'll pay $200 a month, no problem; right now o1-preview does the work for me of a ... somewhat distracted graduate student who needs checking, all for under $1 / day. It's slow for an LLM, but SUPER FAST for a grad student. If I can get a more rarely distracted graduate student that's better at coding for $7/day, well, that's worth a try. I can always cancel.