Driverless Cars, Chinese Models and the AI Cost Wall
End-of-world AI headlines have you wondering whether to keep investing? Keep going, but watch the cost. Tom, Mike and Mark cover Tom's Waymo rides, Grok Bot's three-day training, cheap Chinese models. Mark calls labs' doom talk self-serving; Tom cites $1,000/month in subscriptions and API calls for a one-person operation, while DeepSeek and Kimi K3 run on your hardware.
Highlights
Highlights
- Riding a Waymo twice — including a tight LA street — turned a skeptic into a believer.
- Chinese models like DeepSeek Flash and Kimi K3 are fast, cheap and already in daily use.
- End-of-world warnings from AI labs read as self-serving cover for a first-past-the-post race.
- Route routine prompts to cheaper models; 99.9% of work doesn't need the newest model.
- One-person AI subscriptions and API calls now top $1,000 a month, and prices keep rising.
- Home-built tools are retiring WordPress hosting, Zapier and N8N subscriptions one by one.
Important Concepts and Frameworks
- Grok Bot — Grok's bot platform that runs multiple bots inside your own private zone, working together on tasks.
- DeepSeek Flash — Chinese model Tom uses daily, built to need less memory because chips are scarce.
- Kimi K3 — Chinese model praised for development work and called unbelievably cheap at token level.
- Prompt Balancing — Sending certain prompts to cheaper models instead of defaulting everything to the newest, priciest one.
- Orchestrator Model — A premium model told to do no work, only pick and hand off tasks to cheaper sub-agents.
- First Past the Post — Mark's frame for the AI race: whoever gets there first could control every system and network.
- Open-Weight Models — Models you download and run on your own hardware, like Tom's Mac Mini, with no cloud call.
Tools & Resources Mentioned
- Waymo — Driverless ride-hailing service Tom rode twice in Phoenix; it also cleared a tight LA street.
- Grok Bot — Bot platform pushed through a three-day money-making training, with a $200 commitment ask.
- DeepSeek Flash — Chinese model that is extremely fast and designed to run with far less memory.
- Kimi K3 — Chinese model Tom uses for development work; Mark's friend calls it really good.
- Fable 5.1 — Newest model Tom loads as an orchestrator rather than as a worker.
- Netlify — Hosting Mike used to deploy his event site until he ran out of credits.
- Zapier — Automation service Tom is down to two flows from, saving $300 a year.
- n8n — Workflow automation tool costing roughly $450 to $500 a year that Tom is retiring.
Calls to Action
- Tally your monthly AI subscriptions and API spend before your next planning session.
- Inventory where work is hard or stalled, then map AI against those specific points instead of chasing tools.
- Test one cheap or open-weight model on real work before assuming you need the premium tier.
- Set a premium model as orchestrator and route the heavy lifting to cheaper sub-agents.
- Put the youngest people in your company in the room when you set AI direction.
Key Quotes
- "It thought about it for a second, and then it totally did it." — Mark Redgrave
- "DeepSeek's Flash version, which just came out, is extraordinarily good. It's extraordinarily fast." — Tom Adams
- "To me, this is a completely self-serving false narrative, right?" — Mark Redgrave
- "I run an open weight model on my Mac Mini right now, and it works." — Tom Adams
- "The absolute truth is 99.9% of us do not need the latest fable, right?" — Mark Redgrave
- "There's a long list of things that could end the world. This might be another thing on the list." — Mike Richardson
Chapters
00:00 — Riding a Driverless Car Twice and Trusting It
07:18 — Grok Bot's Three-Day Promise to Make a Bazillion Dollars
10:48 — The Cheap Chinese Models Nobody Talks About
14:01 — End-of-World Warnings Meet Blocked Data Centers
15:47 — Who Actually Benefits From the Doom Narrative
24:31 — A Manufacturer's Spec Sheets Finally Match the Floor
32:55 — Hedge With DeepSeek or Stay All-In on Anthropic?
39:24 — Prompt Balancing: Send Cheap Work to Cheap Models
43:10 — Retiring WordPress, Zapier and N8N Subscriptions
46:01 — Planning for '27: Inventory Your Friction First
Meet the Crew
Mike Richardson – Agility, Peer Power & Collective Intelligence
Website: https://mikerichardson.live/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/
Mark Redgrave – Agility, People and Performance
Website: https://www.shift-transform.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/
Tom Adams – Executive Coach, Advisor & Trail Blazer
Website: https://tomadams.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/
