the inference bills came. and did not stop coming.
they had known it was expensive. what they had not known was that it would devour them. that every token generated would cost more than the revenue it produced. that the mathematics of it was not a temporary condition but a law. a law written in electricity and silicon and money that moved in only one direction.
a good developer with the right tool could be efficient. but there were no good developers anymore, only the ones who remained. and the always-on agents monitored continuously, even when no human requested anything. these things did not care about efficiency. they ran at all hours like machines that had been built to run and had no off switch.
the companies considered laying off more people. but the inference would continue. the agents would continue. the money would continue to leave.
in the end they had architected their own obsolescence. they had built systems that needed to be fed constantly, that could not be starved without dying, and now they were trapped inside them like men who'd boarded up their own exits.
there was no way out that did not cost more than staying in cost.
the market waited. it always waits.
Younguk Yi: A portrait of a swan whose jaw flares open before its wings ever spread, 2025