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Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

businessinsider.com

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Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#321

Post by bandrami »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #109
SoftTalker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example? What is different about running Uber services in Chicago vs. Indianapolis?

For example in Seattle you pay county fees, and then state fees, and then maybe special fees if you were picked up in the airport. I took a ride from SEATAC to my hotel in downtown Seattle and besides the ride itself, there were 5 other items on the bill, 4 of which are specific to the place I used Uber. Then I had the return trip from my hotel to SEATAC, on this one I got EIGHT items on the bill, on top of the ride…

Sri Lanka does the OTP too. But then again India does OTPs for literally everything because your entire identity is tied to your SIM card.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#322

Post by bandrami »

loeg wrote: post #145
HDThoreaun wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokenmaxxing exists because executives think employees are resistant to change. Thats it, a way to incentivize/force every employee to experiment with a new technology. Obviously once they think everyone is utilizing AI the tokkenmaxxing stuff will end.

Yes. Executives think, correctly , that employees are resistant to change.

But they incorrectly think "employee adoption of LLMs" is a first-order goal

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#323

Post by bandrami »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #52
jhack wrote: post #38

Maybe don't use the most expensive models on the planet? Maybe use AI like a tool and not this black box that grants wishes?

I think companies are reluctantly realizing that AI is not a magic genie in a bottle, and is instead a tool. Still very valuable. They just need to have strategies that match what the tools are capable of - not strategies that involve "rub the magic lamp and increase profits 80%". If the market is rewarding companies going after the "rub the lamp" strategy, they're going to say they're doing that to juice stock price…

> Still very valuable

You sure about that?

Both labs and tech companies have been desperate to show ROI on LLM use and nobody can seem to

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#324

Post by expedition32 »

smoofles wrote: post #301
uejfiweun wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I don't get though, is that most people just don't have that much work they need to do. I can use AI to pretty easily get my work done just via the regular chat interfaces. But because of the tokenmaxxing metrics that leadership tracks, I end up just having the AI deliberate for hours on random things just so that I can boost my token numbers. I think tokenmaxxing for the end goal you described is only real…

Not being buried under a backlog of work is one aspect, and the other is that the sheer _urgency_ of these efforts makes it look like companies like Uber could be displaced in a year or two by someone who gets lucky with AI use. Which absolutely isn’t the case. Even if someone would manage to overtake a market leader on tech merit alone, within 1-2 years, thanks to AI, markets don’t swing on such short notices. The f…

Ha the real stars of Uber aren't the programmers. It is the lawyers.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#325

Post by Neywiny »

delichon wrote: post #211
mejutoco wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is interesting but tokenmaxxing is not maximizing token usage _efficiency_. It is maximizing its usage.

Thanks, that's so odd that I assumed it was about efficiency, which is how I treat tokens. It's hard to imagine a 19th century business man ordering his staff to send as many long winded telegrams as they can.

Think of it like this: telegraphs are the hot new thing. The more you send, the more modern and relevant your company. No more Pony Express. You can either have employees sending 1-2 a day. Or, 100 per day. Wow so advanced, so modern, invest now.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#326

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #235
loeg wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can believe whatever conspiracy theories you want, of course, but the most straightforward explanation is that when you lay off X,000 or XX,000 people, some number of them will be on leave.

My understanding is that they must layoff some workers on leave, otherwise they would be discriminating

In Europe people on sick leave are protected (under certain conditions).

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#327

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

delichon wrote: post #157

There is little new under the big fusion reactor in the sky. I just read a chapter in James Glieck's "The Information" about tokenmaxxing in the telegraphy industry. There used to be a big market for code books to reduce the per-character charges for sending telegrams. Compression was cash in the pocket. The telegraph companies discouraged the practice but were forced to accept it. The telegraph code industry started…

What you describe is practically the opposite of tokenmaxxing.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#328

Post by duxup »

eudamoniac wrote: post #279
duxup wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an amusing post about judging developers based on token usage where some user on HN here was pushing this idea “ICs don’t like it but this is the best way to evaluate” (something like that). They have a whole management team and can’t seem to find a way to judge or god forbid encourage developers…

I don't get why it's so hard for management to see the good devs. All the devs know who are the good devs.

And they know things like “Dude isn’t a high performer metrics wise but his work is solid.” Arguably some of the most difficult things to know from a management perspective.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#329

Post by pmg101 »

roxolotl wrote: post #260
pmg101 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one explanation, sure. Isn't it more likely that they simply don't in fact care about the "thing they care about", only the metric? They can plot the metric on a chart and receive praise, so that's what they're interested in.

That’s an even worse characterization of them isn’t it? They don’t even care about the end result just the metric. That would take them from clueless to malicious.

I wouldn't describe it as malice. If your job is to make the line go up, you make the line go up, and are rewarded for doing so, then you have done your job.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#330

Post by CptFribble »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #299
dmazzoni wrote: post #201

I remember at Google at around 2007 - 2009, as Google was massively expanding its data centers, there was a lot of unused capacity, especially during off-hours. Any engineer could run as many jobs as they wanted at zero priority, which means the job would be first in line to be killed if a more important task needed the resource. I did so many interesting experiments with MapReduces that would run overnight. For a wh…

You’re right of course, but wouldn’t it be more likely that everyone will embrace 10x cheaper Chinese models?

my money is on: eventually frontier model dev and training becomes basic research funded by governments, and LLM operators become essentially private utilities a la ISPs, competing mostly on data center operational costs and occasionally new chip tech to run models cheaper

and governments will keep running massive data centers with classified frontier models for intelligence and propaganda purposes

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