[rajvarkala]

Understood. So, a better way is to keep him on a retainer? Or let Amazon or Cheaper store do a cost-plus model?

I think that is the core of the argument. It is the risk-sharing between buyer and seller. If sold on outcomes, seller carries all risk. If sold on work-put-in, buyer carries all risk.

Add to that, in some scenarios, outcomes themselves are fuzzy.

[Neywiny]

Cost plus I'm not sure on. Maybe if your work was in small enough chunks. But if, did example, just generating one response is too expensive, there's no plus, it's just somebody paid $ for some bits in GPU memory and that's likely not useful to anyone.

Yes exactly. Your second paragraph hits the nail on the head. And I'm sure you agree that the AI companies aren't going to take on more risk for free.