AI is cheap. It only costs a few euro to translate a whole Harry Potter book using the best AI models I just calculated.

Wow, a few euro for the whole book? That's cheap! Yes, but it takes time.
Days? Hours? Minutes?

And how much do other things than a translation service cost since if you're doing smth more complex and need the most expensive model? My article is all about wasting as much money as possible regarding AI.

The article we really need regarding AI pricing: https://molodetz.nl/retoor/gists/...

I translated the terrible AI pricing to something humans can understand! Time and Harry Potter.

If you didn't read Harry Potter, read that first. Priorities.

And this, this was a great christmas night!

TLDR; if you would use the best AI (4o!) for a translation service it would cost you $0.0015 per minute.

I wouldn't read an AI-translated Harry Potter. I tend to pay attention to translation quality so I won't like it when I get to something badly translated. When reading human-translated books at least I can blame somebody.

@cafecortado exactly. For me the same! Especially Harry Potter which is a book that I LOVE.

Still, i am thinking about actually doing the whole book translation. There is something not stated in the article. While the price probably is correct, there are two things missing:

- the instruction to translate to the AI agent is a few tokens. Let's say 30. If I would translate 750 pages (or what was it?) that it means I have to pay 750*30=22.500 tokens for nothing. 22500*0.0000025=0.05625. Oh, I think we can ignore that. The programming is just 5 cent for 750 pages.

- there is a limit of tokens per minute. So, while the price seems correct, the time it would take in total, could be longer. For example, the price stays 9,- or so but it could actually take two hours more. I have no idea, have to calculate. Just woke up :P

But this research is unique right? I love the price per minute, because now I can look at time, run a heavy batch process and look at time again to see how much

@cafecortado I am now running a review process from another ranter. Based on time, I know how much it costs me. So, if it is not done after x minutes, I'm like, meh, that's enough money spent. But it's so cheap, a huge review is many minutes but doesn't cost anything at all. I think I do massive review for just a few cents. Spending a few cents to test a review system automatically is totally worth it and somebody will be happy with the result and I have a POC :)

@retoor

> My article is all about wasting as much money as possible regarding AI

Get the AI to narrate the book, with unique consistent voices for each character? (I loved the audiobooks when I was a kid, they were the Dutch ones, though)

Does it compare well to DeepL?

@cafecortado AFAIK they are doing more AI in the manga industry because of incorrect translations of the humans