---
title: "The window before the utility"
url: https://raskell.io/notes/the-window-before-the-utility/
author: Raffael Schneider
date: 2026-10-25
description: "Tokens will be a metered utility and AI as ordinary as electricity. Until then, learning to use it well is an advantage that will not come around again."
tags: [inference, economics, augmentation, democratisation, ai-engineering]
---

# The window before the utility

I argued in [The Economics of Inference](https://raskell.io/articles/the-economics-of-inference/) that tokens are a metered utility, priced per unit like water or electricity, and that pricing and provision will converge on the utility model. The consequence follows: AI capability will be commoditised. It will become normal, boring, and available to everyone on the same terms, and once it is, having it is no advantage at all, any more than having electricity is. The model behind it becomes a dependency like any other, the argument of [The Model Is a Dependency](https://raskell.io/articles/the-model-is-a-dependency/), and its bill gets metered into the loop, as in [The Bill Is Part of the Loop](https://raskell.io/articles/the-bill-is-part-of-the-loop/).

That is the end state. We are not there. The models, the tools and the prices are still moving every quarter, and in a moving market the advantage goes to the people who adopt early and learn to use the thing well, which is work. This is why the feeling in [ideas stop waiting](https://raskell.io/notes/ideas-stop-waiting/) is a window and not a new normal: nobody in 2036 will write a note about feeling empowered by their electricity supply. The window is open now, it is once in a lifetime in the literal sense, and what one does with it is the question. One answer is in [citizen entrepreneurs](https://raskell.io/notes/citizen-entrepreneurs/).