Sam Altman: “$30k to get a simple iPhone app created, $300 for a plumbing job”

Really weird comparison. The type of job isn&#x27;t specified even, but for $300 it had to be tiny. Probably a small fix.<p>So compare that plumbing job to say, fixing a bug in code, and you&#x27;ll be a lot closer. Or go the other way and compare building an app from scratch to plumbing a house from scratch, and again will be a lot closer.<p>Plumbers in my parts charge about hourly what a dev makes. Making an app just takes a lot longer than whatever plumbing job is being referenced.

Such a vapid statement. Plumbing a new house will cost tens of thousands of dollars, and a developer&#x27;s billed time to fix a bug (whatever the programming equivalent of a leaky faucet is) could be under $300.

As someone who has done coding and hired coders, things that seem simple can be deceptively hard. Even the simplest stuff can take forever to figure out, things like caching. It&#x27;s not that irrational it costs so much. How many people can code well? Very few due to cognitive barriers to entry, yet it&#x27;s a very highly economically valued skill (top 5 tech companies worth trillions). Many more people can learn how to do plumbing, hence more supply, but less economic value although plumbers are important.

It costs $30k to get exterior sewer main line replaced in many places in CA. I can get a simple iPhone app made on Fiverr for $300<p>This comparison makes no sense.

Huh. A guy hawking snake oil trying to push his product.

I can do that basic $300 plumbing job as a developer, but the plumbers I know couldn&#x27;t do a 30k development project.

What a poor comparison.<p>I don&#x27;t understand why this guy is the CEO of OpenAI.

$30k seems grotesquely high, although I do agree with the point. I&#x27;m not sure how much of it is to do with supply vs demand (there being a lesser quantity of software engineers experienced in capable of making apps vs plumbers) and how much of that is just artificially inflated, but I imagine it&#x27;s some combination of both.

Most comments in this thread seems to be completely missing the point.<p>Imagine instead, three years ago, before ChatGPT and Dall-E, he tweeted something like:<p>“”” 2019: $30,000 to (produce real game assets out of my programmer art sketches)|(write a well researched biography)|(animate a short film)|(narrate my documentary), $300 for a plumbing job.<p>i wonder what those relative prices will look like in 2028! “””<p>We’re not there yet, but already it’s pretty clear the prices of the former will decrease dramatically, to the point it takes a similar amount of human effort, training, skill, and experience as the plumbing job - then perhaps get even easier!<p>It is interesting to think why most other comments try to pick apart the original tweet instead

I have no idea what he is trying to say. That the $30K iPhone app is too expensive? That the prices of the two jobs will diverge more over the next five years? Or the reverse?

Price of implementing GPT? 300$<p>Price of training GPT? 30k$

I can create a simple iPhone app for $50.