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AI sticker shock hits corporate America

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11–20 of 154 posts

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#11
Just a week ago, Anthropic barely breaking even was hailed as AI companies being close to profitability much earlier than forecast.

In fact it is all smoke and mirrors, pure mania from C-level executives out of their depth trying to one-up each other with company money, and they aren't even close.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#12

This is almost entirely on Anthropic and the stupid C suite people trying to push TokenMaxxing. GPT5.5 is much more token efficient, other models are much cheaper, and if used in moderation rather than than trying to get everyone to OpenClaw 24/7 with token leaderboards, it's much more economical. Also ironically, a lot of GenZ and young Millenials who were already bitter at their employers have used the tokenmaxxing…

I’m an “old millenial” and the excessive burning of tokens will continue until working conditions improve.

Working conditions are fine, I simply am not incentivized to be efficient with tokens.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#13
Playing out in company after company right now:

CEOs: “Get me some of that GenAI”

CTO: “OK, we have all the GenAI”

CEOs: “Employees, it’s AI or bust”

Employees: Tokenmax

CFO: “Um, this is costing a ton and we’re not seeing savings or efficiency materialize.”

CEO: “Are we getting any value out of this?”

COO: “Not really, and frankly I’m getting annoyed at all the AI slop turning up all over.”

CEO: “OK, well, let’s do a big layoff and then I’ll just say it was because of AI. Hopefully folks won’t blame me for the mess and I’ll just talk about how amazing AI is.”

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#14

This is almost entirely on Anthropic and the stupid C suite people trying to push TokenMaxxing. GPT5.5 is much more token efficient, other models are much cheaper, and if used in moderation rather than than trying to get everyone to OpenClaw 24/7 with token leaderboards, it's much more economical. Also ironically, a lot of GenZ and young Millenials who were already bitter at their employers have used the tokenmaxxing…

Are you saying that making a leaderboard of who is spending the most is going to be expensive? They couldn't see that coming, but for sure they can predict how the future will be when it's time to sell their "visions" of the world. Meanwhile, sheep's are going to believe and max their token usage with their own wallet. "You are so be left behind if you're not". It's a mass psychosis. The only winners here are the har…

The other day I had to read a C-suite guy share how he had an epiphany that spending more tokens did not linearly align with more useful features being output by the teams. He was describing it as this breakthrough moment for him, as if it wasn't glaringly obvious that making the KPI "spend more tokens" would result in inefficient token spending, not massive value for the customer.

It's baffling how these people have entirely shut their ears to all the obvious warnings about this, and are now congratulating themselves for their slightly less psychotic outlook and pivoting to blaming the workers for inefficient usage, after specifically forcing them to tokenmaxx.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#15

This is almost entirely on Anthropic and the stupid C suite people trying to push TokenMaxxing. GPT5.5 is much more token efficient, other models are much cheaper, and if used in moderation rather than than trying to get everyone to OpenClaw 24/7 with token leaderboards, it's much more economical. Also ironically, a lot of GenZ and young Millenials who were already bitter at their employers have used the tokenmaxxing…

Excessive token burning as a tactic to annoy your employer probably does the opposite - it probably makes your employer money.

The more tokens you burn, the more demand for hardware there will be. More demand for hardware means higher stock prices -> more money in your employer's pocket.

The only question is how long that can last. If taken to an extreme, the output of the AI will get worse over time, and if it gets bad enough, for long enough, people will use it less and less, and demand will slowly evaporate.

My point is NOT: I hope this all comes crashing down.

My point IS: tokenmaxing is bad. AND weaponizing it will not have the intended effect, but in fact, it will, in the short term, do the opposite.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#16

This is almost entirely on Anthropic and the stupid C suite people trying to push TokenMaxxing. GPT5.5 is much more token efficient, other models are much cheaper, and if used in moderation rather than than trying to get everyone to OpenClaw 24/7 with token leaderboards, it's much more economical. Also ironically, a lot of GenZ and young Millenials who were already bitter at their employers have used the tokenmaxxing…

Counterpoint: based on a lot of anecdotes here, the most likely people to burn tokens aren’t GenZ but managers using ChatGPT to respond to questions or otherwise as an outsourcing of their job. There aren’t enough GenZ in the workforce to back your claim in my opinion. Token efficiency where instead of the AI burning money at 1:3 instead of 1:5 isn’t quite a winning argument.

There's no way managers using LLMs to answer emails are burning tokens at a comparable rate to someone trying to utilize inference in production systems is.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an “old millenial” and the excessive burning of tokens will continue until working conditions improve.

Working conditions are fine, I simply am not incentivized to be efficient with tokens.

Yeah, everything is fine until you don’t want to use AI for something because it sucks at that task and then you end up on a PiP because your token burn is low. Why the f*ck are AI Token Use Leaderboards even a thing.

Features that used to take months are now expected in days. Oh you didn’t merge 40 pull requests and deploy to prod 15 times today? Aren’t you using Opus the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel?! What do you mean it’s hard to review 100 merge requests per day? Just have Claude review it! That’s a PiP.

Oh prod is down because people keep deploying code that nobody even freakin’ read? Just have Claude fix it! What do you mean it’s doesn’t work well? Just burn more tokens or you’re on a PiP.

Surely there wouldn’t be malicious compliance by people that would prefer to use the right tool for the job instead of having this crap shoved down our throats by management by threat of termination.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that making a leaderboard of who is spending the most is going to be expensive? They couldn't see that coming, but for sure they can predict how the future will be when it's time to sell their "visions" of the world. Meanwhile, sheep's are going to believe and max their token usage with their own wallet. "You are so be left behind if you're not". It's a mass psychosis. The only winners here are the har…

The other day I had to read a C-suite guy share how he had an epiphany that spending more tokens did not linearly align with more useful features being output by the teams. He was describing it as this breakthrough moment for him, as if it wasn't glaringly obvious that making the KPI "spend more tokens" would result in inefficient token spending, not massive value for the customer. It's baffling how these people have…

You get what you measure.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#20
Just wait until companies are dependent on on it. When their employees can't think without it. When their AI generated codebase is such a mess they'd need a rewrite to understand it without AI. When they've got AI embedded in all their internal processes and tools. Then massive price hikes will come because they've been bent over a barrel and they'll have no alternative that isn't at least as painful in the short-term as letting the AI company fuck them. The long term won't matter then because any company capable of seeing past the short term wouldn't let themselves get into that position in the first place.
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