If it could take up to 30x = 90 steps á 10 000 tokens, or 10 steps with 128 000 tokens, then it would be likely the price exceeds cost of an expert everywhere in the world. An expert in low-cost country would be much more desirable. Especially if said expert will use a 20 dollar LLM subscription.
“without omission, in the field of orbital astrodynamics, provide the formulas used in each maneuver in launching and landing an Apollo moon mission, and the rationale and prerequisites of understanding behind each”
Of course I am not sure, but I think a MSc or PhD student in physics could write within 1 hour at the same accuracy as o1. Without physics studies it would take longer, but still doable within a few hours. It would not be 100% accurate, but neither o1.
So, that makes me think if this is an experiment for human-level AGI pricing, or if the intent is to discourage use O1 but it is available for political correctness? Using ChatGPT seems a better deal with 120 messages per month, 17 cents each, if only using O1.
Alternatively, is it possible the average of most O1 queries still is around 17 cents because each step only consumes so few tokens?
Final thought, as I would imagine, many of the mentioned use cases (genetics, physics) would benefit from automating lots of queries instead of just a few runs if it can actually solve problems. Such as “I need to find material that fits this criteria, please solve for these 1000 materials”, but it should be cheaper than having 100 research assistants from India to solve manually. Research assistants probably will do a better job and might also make some other observations.