Axios

AI companies have competed on having the best and often most dangerous models for years. Now, they're pivoting to a new focus: cost.

Why it matters: The biggest risk to the AI boom is demand, and recent innovations to make models cheaper while maintaining powerful levels of intelligence have offered a bullish signal.

• As the prices of top models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others come down, usage is increasing dramatically, a trend that points to the kind of demand that will be necessary to justify trillions of dollars in spending.

Rising costs are changing dating for more than eight in 10 Gen Z and millennial daters, leaving some to stop courting altogether, per new data from Zelle.

The big picture: Young Americans are pushing off milestones under cost pressures — and the milestones themselves, from getting hitched to buying a home, are getting pricier once they get there.

Of the various ways experts fear AI could kill us all, one is slowly moving closer to reality: AI learning to make itself unstoppable.

Why it matters: Recursive Self Improvement, the ability of an AI model to build better versions of itself without human guidance, could make increasingly capable systems harder for humans to control.