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Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

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Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#61

Post by asadotzler »

sroerick wrote: post #4

I genuinely have no idea how some of these companies got so far over their skis on AI. It simply does not make sense to me.

Apple and Meta (and others) did the same thing with VR. In 2015 all these CEOs were looking for their next app store and, herd-like, settled on VR computing. They couldn't come up with anything more promising so they burned tens of billions on failed goggles that anyone with any sense could have told you was never going to work.

Groupthink. FOMO. Envy. Hubris. Greed. Those fuel Big Tech and we get to pay for the results.

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#62

Post by watwut »

deadbabe wrote: post #9

If your choices are “reduce productivity, make money” or “increase productivity, but still make the same money”, why would you ever choose the latter? The thing about option 1 is that you still have “potential productivity” that you can tap into during critical times, where as in option 2, employees have already used up the “potential productivity” doing god knows what with AI, and you can’t push them more without br…

> potential productivity” that you can tap into during critical times,

Critical times thinking is considered ineffectivity last 30 years or so. Managers who do that are considered bad.

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#64

Post by asadotzler »

simonw wrote: post #18

> The ride-hailing company has introduced usage caps, limiting employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending on individual AI tools, after blowing through its entire AI 2026 budget by April. Right, because they set their 2026 budget in 2025. And in 2025 nobody could predict how good (and token-hungry) coding agents would get after November 2025. I'd be surprised if any company that set an AI budget for 2026 hasn't bl…

A CEO unable to predict or even imagine a few months down the road, who bets everything on the current state of things, is a shitty CEO.

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#65

Post by solid_fuel »

danielvaughn wrote: post #3

We're in a dangerous valley where AI is _just_ good enough to fool some otherwise very smart people. Similar to the old adage of "a little bit of information is a dangerous thing." Lots of CEOs got duped into thinking that model capabilities were far ahead of where they actually were. I'm actually not sure if we're going to get out of the valley without figuring out a surefire way to reliably evaluate these things.

> Lots of CEOs got duped into thinking that model capabilities were far ahead of where they actually were.

Are these CEOs the "very smart people" you're talking about? To my eyes it's mostly the same crowd that was drooling over crypto and blockchain and the metaverse just a few years ago, and it was clear that was a stupid idea at the time too.

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#66

Post by manwithopinions »

simonw wrote: post #22
josefritzishere wrote: post #2

Companies are learning that even with mass layoffs, AI isn't worth what it costs for most use cases. This is an important inflection point because none of the AI companies are profitable, i.e. they're all still charging substantially less than what it costs to actually deliver the service. With things in that intermediate state, it's hard to know what a future stable state will be like.

If AI isn't worth what it costs why are some of these companies allowing $1,000+/employee/month?

Matthew Prince of Cloudflare has been outspoken in saying that companies that do not go all in on AI will be left behind. There probably is some value being received in exchange for tokens but it seems quite plausible that some or even much of this spending by companies is driven by fear.

$1k/month is nothing as a hedge against a CEO being accused of causing their company to be left behind in the AI utopia of tomorrow. If you’re in a peer group that rewards risk taking and all of your peers are taking a risk, you’ve got to take that risk too. Better to burn money trying something and then failing, than to not try. Failure is acceptable, missing an opportunity is not.

https://xcancel.com/eastdakota/status/2025221270061580453

“My advice: don’t be a [dinosaur]. I’ve seen this movie before and they go extinct. ”

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#67

Post by lapcat »

nixpulvis wrote: post #37

I'm so frustrated by both the zealous AI bulls and the blind AI opposition. There's a lot of issues, ranging over technical, cultural, environmental, and moral problems. But there's also obvious value. To say otherwise tells me you haven't actually tried to make use of these tools. It's one thing to get an AI google response and feel like it's dubious, it's another thing to know what you want and have an LLM find the…

> There's a lot of issues, ranging over technical, cultural, environmental, and moral problems. But there's also obvious value. To say otherwise tells me you haven't actually tried to make use of these tools.

Why would you try to make use of these tools when there are obvious environmental and moral problems with them? What do you tell yourself about those problems, and how do you get past them?

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#68

Post by nixpulvis »

mpalmer wrote: post #55
nixpulvis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently learned the term "thought-terminating cliché" and it's so incredibly prevalent in society these days. Always has been I'm sure, but short form text based anonymous communication must be making it worse.

It's a useful term but humorously risks becoming auto-exemplary.

Haha, yes 100% I've had the same thought.

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#69

Post by asp_hornet »

lapcat wrote: post #67
nixpulvis wrote: post #37

I'm so frustrated by both the zealous AI bulls and the blind AI opposition. There's a lot of issues, ranging over technical, cultural, environmental, and moral problems. But there's also obvious value. To say otherwise tells me you haven't actually tried to make use of these tools. It's one thing to get an AI google response and feel like it's dubious, it's another thing to know what you want and have an LLM find the…

> There's a lot of issues, ranging over technical, cultural, environmental, and moral problems. But there's also obvious value. To say otherwise tells me you haven't actually tried to make use of these tools. Why would you try to make use of these tools when there are obvious environmental and moral problems with them? What do you tell yourself about those problems, and how do you get past them?

No OP but I can tell you exactly where I find my peace:

4 dependents, a cost of living that keeps rocketing and an industry that’s decided “the people who don’t glaze this shit don’t get to continue”.

Maybe Ive sold out but what’s the alternative, I’m 17 years in, I can’t figure how I pivot my expertise and still support the family’s demands.

Re: Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

#70

Post by nixpulvis »

lapcat wrote: post #67
nixpulvis wrote: post #37

I'm so frustrated by both the zealous AI bulls and the blind AI opposition. There's a lot of issues, ranging over technical, cultural, environmental, and moral problems. But there's also obvious value. To say otherwise tells me you haven't actually tried to make use of these tools. It's one thing to get an AI google response and feel like it's dubious, it's another thing to know what you want and have an LLM find the…

> There's a lot of issues, ranging over technical, cultural, environmental, and moral problems. But there's also obvious value. To say otherwise tells me you haven't actually tried to make use of these tools. Why would you try to make use of these tools when there are obvious environmental and moral problems with them? What do you tell yourself about those problems, and how do you get past them?

I think it's worth understanding the technology so we can have informed strategies for how to best regulate it.

We don't solve the climate crisis by abandoning all the technological progress which has put such a strain on our ecosystem, we solve it by rethinking how we use this technology, and finding new technologies and policies to better meet our needs.

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