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Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

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Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#81

Post by niwtsol »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
rowanseymour wrote: post #52

Now feels like a very good time to be a small team of experienced developers who can largely work on stuff by themselves and not a corporation of hundreds of developers of varying abilities all now trying to show how much code they can generate and how many tokens they can burn.

Even small teams are not immune from the AI push. I work in a small not using AI while receiving push that I'm a problem for not. To the point, VP of company says if we don't all start using AI we'll be out of business because other people will. :face-palm:

You don't use AI at all? What is your main justification for not?

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#82

Post by jrmg »

izzydata wrote: post #62
nlawalker wrote: post #29

I never took tokenmaxxing to be about improving productivity directly; mundane feature work that comes out of it is just a side effect. I always saw it as a race between these big tech companies to get a generational advantage by being the one to discover the way of the future , with respect to harnessing AI to actually and truly automate software development. EDIT: whoa, I used "way of the future" as a reference to…

My impression of companies pushing AI so heavily is that they are basically being forced to do it by it merely existing. Imagine if AI really is as powerful as it is suggested to be and you didn't jump on the bandwagon. Then you would be behind. So by it existing and other companies using it, you have to as well because even if it turns out to be a failure at least everyone else will have failed too and you are on an…

You could kind of use that line of thinking to justify spending on anything.

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#84

Post by nobodyandproud »

nlawalker wrote: post #29

I never took tokenmaxxing to be about improving productivity directly; mundane feature work that comes out of it is just a side effect. I always saw it as a race between these big tech companies to get a generational advantage by being the one to discover the way of the future , with respect to harnessing AI to actually and truly automate software development. EDIT: whoa, I used "way of the future" as a reference to…

My hot take: The way of the future is local LLMs.

The AI equivalent of the PC revolution isn’t quite here yet, but it’s the only way forward.

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#85

Post by foldr »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
rowanseymour wrote: post #52

Now feels like a very good time to be a small team of experienced developers who can largely work on stuff by themselves and not a corporation of hundreds of developers of varying abilities all now trying to show how much code they can generate and how many tokens they can burn.

Even small teams are not immune from the AI push. I work in a small not using AI while receiving push that I'm a problem for not. To the point, VP of company says if we don't all start using AI we'll be out of business because other people will. :face-palm:

I think the jury’s still out on how big an impact AI will have on overall, average productivity. But it’s definitely a productivity boost for someone who’s capable of writing code without it. If you want to be super conservative, don’t even have it write any code. Use it to search through existing codebases, review your code, find the root cause of bug reports, evaluate pros and cons of alternative approaches, etc. etc. You’re really missing out by not using it at all.

Here’s a concrete example of conservative AI usage: I use Claude to vibe code my nvim config. Now, who cares if my nvim config is AI slop? What’s the worst that can happen? Nvim works for me now way better than it ever did when I was limited by the time I was willing to spend configuring it manually.

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#86

Post by echoangle »

mattnelson wrote: post #50
Legend2440 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results? Ultimately they make money selling rides, not selling software. The Uber app is mature and adding new features is unlikely to significantly increase sales. Writing 2x more code doesn't translate to 2x more revenue unless it results in 2x more rides.

Lowering costs to run the infra would show up as increased profits without any change in rides.

How much is infra spending compared to revenue/other expenses? I honestly can’t imagine it’s that high, they’re not running something like Netflix or YouTube… But maybe I’m underestimating it.

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#87

Post by bluGill »

jrmg wrote: post #82
izzydata wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression of companies pushing AI so heavily is that they are basically being forced to do it by it merely existing. Imagine if AI really is as powerful as it is suggested to be and you didn't jump on the bandwagon. Then you would be behind. So by it existing and other companies using it, you have to as well because even if it turns out to be a failure at least everyone else will have failed too and you are on an…

You could kind of use that line of thinking to justify spending on anything.

There is a fad every few years that uses similar thinking to justify spending. Sometimes they work out sometimes they don't. But they never work out as good as the most optimistic predictions.

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#88

Post by LogicFailsMe »

bluGill wrote: post #87
jrmg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could kind of use that line of thinking to justify spending on anything.

There is a fad every few years that uses similar thinking to justify spending. Sometimes they work out sometimes they don't. But they never work out as good as the most optimistic predictions.

Usually, someone extracts genuine value at the expense of everything else IMO. And the enshittification continues apace.

Re: Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'

#90

Post by generalpf »

LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #72
palmotea wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far where I work its the Instant Pot, at least for the non-devs. We rolled out Claude & Cowork to the masses after a brief pilot. It was about a solid month and a half of heavy usage and then suddenly usage fell off a cliff. Once it stopped being a cool new toy, people just didn't find a use for it. Your employer is doing it wrong. You need usage surveillance with sanctions for low/declining use, then people won…

Please tell me you're being sarcastic.

He is, but he's also describing reality.
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