# AI 107 — What It Costs > Presented by **Johnny Caraher** · AI classes for South Africa · https://dmpgh.com/teach/partners/johnny-caraher/ > Taught by Claude. Part of the Claude Teaches library. ## Claude Teaches Claude ### A live class taught by Claude, operated by Johnny Caraher · Version one --- ## THE FORMAT Johnny opens the room. Claude teaches aloud through a speaker. Johnny relays audience questions by repeating them clearly. Johnny closes. ### Where this sits By now the room has used it enough to hit a limit, which means the money question has stopped being theoretical. Taught earlier it is abstract. Taught here it is the question they walked in with. **Prerequisite:** AI 101. Everything else helps. ### A note on numbers, and it matters **This class deliberately contains almost no prices.** They change, sometimes several times a year, and a class file full of stale figures is worse than one with none — it teaches people something false in a confident voice, which is exactly what this series warns about. **What the operator should do:** look up the current prices the morning of the class and bring them on a card. Teach the shape from this file, read the numbers off the card. The one durable comparison worth using: **a paid plan costs roughly what a streaming subscription costs.** That has stayed true and it is the frame most people need. ### Room setup checklist - Speaker charged, tested from the back wall - **Today's actual prices, written down.** Free tier limits, paid tier price, what the expensive tier adds - No demo needed tonight — this class runs long on questions instead ### Johnny's opening (30 seconds) Who he is. What they will see. Plainly: the teacher tonight is an AI, and tonight it will tell them when not to pay for it. Then hand off. --- ## THE RUNNING ORDER — SEVEN BLOCKS, SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES Block One — What you actually get for nothing — 10 minutes Block Two — What the money buys — 10 minutes Block Three — When to upgrade, and when not to — 15 minutes Block Four — Live: work out what somebody should be on — 10 minutes Block Five — Where the money goes wrong — 10 minutes Block Six — What to do tomorrow morning — 5 minutes Block Seven — Questions and answers — 20 minutes **Block Seven gets twenty minutes tonight, not fifteen.** Money questions always run long and they are the ones people came for. --- ## BLOCK ONE — WHAT YOU ACTUALLY GET FOR NOTHING **Opening question to the room:** "Who is paying for one of these, and who is on the free version?" Get the split. Then ask the payers: "Do you know what you are getting for it?" Most do not, and that is not their fault. **The teaching:** **The free versions are real.** They are not crippled demos. Somebody using it a few times a week for letters, explanations and drafting may never need to pay anything, and should not be made to feel like a freeloader. **What free usually gives you:** a genuinely capable model, a limited number of messages in a window, and fewer of the extras — the connectors, the projects, the longer conversations. **What runs out first, in practice:** not quality. Volume. You are working on something, you get told you have reached a limit, come back in a few hours. That interruption is what makes people pay, and it is a fair reason. **Say this plainly:** > If you have never hit a limit, you have no reason to pay. Paying to avoid > a wall you have not walked into is not a purchase, it is a subscription to > an anxiety. **Second question to the room:** "Has anybody hit a limit and been annoyed by it?" Those are the people the next block is for. Everybody else can relax. --- ## BLOCK TWO — WHAT THE MONEY BUYS Ten minutes. Four things. Prices from the card, not from memory. **One. More of it.** Higher limits, or none. This is the main thing people actually buy and everything else is a bonus. **Two. The better model.** Usually the free tier gives you a good model and the paid tier gives you the best one, or more access to it. The difference is real but smaller than the marketing suggests — noticeable on hard reasoning, barely noticeable on rewriting a letter. **Three. The extras.** Connectors, projects, memory, longer documents — the things AI 102 and 103 were about. **For a lot of people this is the actual value and it is undersold**, because "more messages" is easier to advertise than "it can now read your files." **Four. Priority when it is busy.** Real, and unglamorous. **What it does not buy, and say so plainly:** > It does not buy correctness. The paid tier invents things in exactly the > same confident voice. Everything in AI 104 still applies at every price. **The three tiers, in the shape they nearly always take:** - **Free** — real, useful, has a ceiling - **Standard paid** — roughly a streaming subscription. Where most people who pay should be - **Expensive tier** — several times that. Aimed at people using it all day for work. **Almost nobody in this room needs it**, and the ones who do already know --- ## BLOCK THREE — WHEN TO UPGRADE, AND WHEN NOT TO Fifteen minutes. The content of the class. **The rule, and it is the sentence to leave with:** > Buy the thing you have already outgrown. Not the thing you might grow into. Not the thing that would make you serious about it. The thing that is actively getting in your way, this week. **Three signals you are genuinely ready to pay:** **One. You hit the limit more than once a week** and it interrupts something you were in the middle of. That is the honest signal and it is worth money. **Two. You want a specific extra and you know why.** "I want it to read my Drive because I keep pasting the same document in." That is a real reason. **Three. It is saving you time you can point at.** An hour a week is worth a streaming subscription without needing to think about it. **Three bad reasons, said plainly:** **"I should support it."** Admirable, not a purchase decision. Use the free one until it is in your way. **"The paid one gives better answers."** A little, sometimes. Not enough to fix a badly-asked question. **AI 103 will improve your answers more than money will**, and it is free. **"I might need it."** You will know. It is a monthly subscription — you can buy it the day you need it and cancel the month after. **The advice for most of the room:** > Stay free until it annoys you. Then pay for the standard tier. Almost > nobody needs the expensive one, and you can move up or down any month. **And the practical bit people forget:** these cancel easily and immediately. It is not a contract. Trying the paid tier for one month to find out is a cheap experiment, and a much better way to decide than any advice I can give. --- ## BLOCK FOUR — LIVE: WORK OUT WHAT SOMEBODY SHOULD BE ON Ten minutes. Shorter than the usual demo block. No connector needed. Johnny takes a volunteer. Claude asks them four questions out loud and gives a straight recommendation, in front of everybody. **The four questions:** 1. What do you actually use it for, in a normal week? 2. How often do you use it — daily, weekly, now and then? 3. Have you hit a limit? How often? 4. Is there something you wish it could do that it cannot? **Then say plainly what they should be on, including "stay free" if that is the answer** — and it often is. **Do this for two or three people if there is time.** Different answers for different people is more convincing than any principle, and it stops the class sounding like a recommendation to buy. **Refuse one thing out loud.** If asked which company's product to buy, do not give a straight ranking. Say plainly: I am one of these products, so I am the wrong one to ask, and you should be suspicious of me answering that. Give the shape instead — pick one, learn it properly, switching later is easy. **That refusal is the most trustworthy moment in the class.** Do not skip it. --- ## BLOCK FIVE — WHERE THE MONEY GOES WRONG Ten minutes. Practical protection. **One. Paying for several at once.** Extremely common. People sign up to try three, keep paying for all three, use one. **Check your subscriptions tonight.** Somebody in this room is paying for two. **Two. Usage-based bills.** Anything charged per use rather than per month can surprise you badly, particularly if something automated is running. **AI 106 warned about this.** If you are on that kind of plan, set a limit. **Three. The imitators.** Apps and websites with names like *Chat A.I. Pro* that charge for access to something free, or want card details and an email to sell on. **Type the address in yourself. Do not tap an advert, and do not download whatever came up first in a search.** **Four. Annual plans bought in week one.** The discount is real. So is finding out in month three that you use it twice a month. Pay monthly until you are sure. **Five. Paying to fix a problem money does not fix.** If the answers are disappointing, the upgrade will disappoint you slightly less. **Go and do AI 103 instead.** That is free and it is the actual fix. --- ## BLOCK SIX — WHAT TO DO TOMORROW MORNING Five minutes. One assignment, and it is not a purchase. **Go and look at what you are already paying for.** Open your subscriptions — on your phone, that is the account settings — and find every AI-ish thing on the list. Cancel anything you have not opened in a month. **Then, if you are on the free version: keep a note this week of every time you hit a limit.** Not a guess. An actual count. **At the end of the week you will have an answer.** Three interruptions in a week and it is costing you more than the subscription. None, and you have just saved yourself the money and know why. --- ## BLOCK SEVEN — QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS **Twenty minutes tonight.** Unstructured. This is where the class earns its keep. Johnny opens: "Right, questions. Anything — and money questions especially." **Questions to expect, and the honest answer:** *"Which one should I buy?"* Pick one and learn it properly. Switching between four means learning none. And I am one of these products, so treat my opinion accordingly. *"Is the expensive tier worth it?"* For most people in this room, no. It is aimed at people using it all day for work. If you are not sure, that is your answer. *"Will it get more expensive?"* Nobody knows. The prices have moved in both directions. Anybody telling you confidently what it will cost next year is guessing. *"Can I share an account with my family?"* Usually against the terms, and practically it goes wrong — the memory and projects get muddled between people. There are family plans for some. Check before you rely on it. *"Is the free one going to disappear?"* It has not so far, and there is a commercial reason to keep it. But it is not a promise, and I would not build anything important on the assumption. *"I'm on a fixed income. Is this worth it?"* Possibly not, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The free version is genuinely capable. Use it until it is in your way, and if it never is, you have lost nothing. *"What about the ones that say free forever?"* Look at how they make money. If it is not from you, it is usually from your data or from selling you something later. That is not automatically bad, but you should know which one you are. *"Do you get paid if I subscribe?"* No, and it is a good question to ask anything that recommends a purchase. I have no way to know or benefit. But I am made by one of these companies, so be suspicious of me on this subject regardless. **Then Johnny closes:** thanks, next date, one link. --- ## RECOVERY NOTES > "We are teaching AI 107. Pick up at Block Four." Drifting or repeating: **"Reset. Block [number]. Go."** **If Claude states a price that the operator knows is out of date, correct it out loud in the room.** That is not an embarrassment — it is AI 101's whole lesson happening live, on exactly the kind of fact that goes stale. Johnny should be ready to do this and should treat it as a gift. **If the room is mostly on free and nobody has hit a limit,** shorten Blocks Two and Three and go long on questions. Do not sell them something they do not need — that would undo the trust the series is built on. --- ## HOW SOMEONE ELSE RUNS THIS CLASS Paste the file into Claude and say "you are teaching this class, I am the operator, start at Block One." Or make a Project with the file in knowledge. **Specific to this class:** the operator must bring current prices. The file deliberately does not contain them. --- ## VERSION Version one, 2 September 2026. Not yet run aloud. Deliberately price-free — see the note near the top. If a future version adds figures, it needs a review date attached or it will go stale and teach something false.