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Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

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Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#181

Post by socialcommenter »

aurareturn wrote: post #29
danny_codes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's no way that was the reason. I judge it to be a combination of FOMO and the big tech companies needing to pump demand for compute.

the big tech companies needing to pump demand for compute. Demand is already so large that OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google could not fill it. Tokenmaxxing for these companies strictly to pump fake demand is just plain wrong. The inference demand for these companies internally must be a drop in a bucket in overall inference demand. This reminds me of the popular opinion on HN for return to office mandates as executive…

Out of $13Bln of 2025 revenue, OpenAI received $867 million from one customer (less charitably, one bankroller), SoftBank. And $300 million from Microsoft[0]. That's more than a drop in the bucket, especially given that they're not the only players complicit in being both an investor and a customer.

Also are we sure it's all at arm's length? Barring a full audit, it's not possible to guarantee that there's no round-tripping or overstating of revenue. With Microsoft also being a provider for OpenAI, they could be creatively using set-off, or using SG&A, in order to overstate their revenue/gross margin/inference profit margin. I of course have no proof, extraordinary claims etc. etc. It's unlikely but we should at least debate the possibility. They have such a huge collective incentive to do it.

[0]: https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/ (no affiliation with the website owner, who has a unique bias in this)

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#182

Post by elvis10ten »

aurareturn wrote: post #2

Tokenmaxxing was just a way to force employees to start leveraging AI in a meaningful way. For companies that have measured performance based on token spend, they can now dial it back. Employees have learned to leverage AI for things they wouldn’t have prior. Now they know what’s possible and what’s not. No one is stupid enough to always measure performance based on token spend and have unlimited budget. It was alway…

Were there cheaper and humane ways to get more employees to use AI? (yes). Did many people JUST burn tokens (goodbart law)? (Yes). Would people revert back to the mean? (I think yes). Do many professionals hate AI because of this push? (Yes). Was the org net productive?

I wish there was an independent body truly assessing the impact of big tech decisions and running counterfactuals. Instead of accepting nice stories like this as a given.

Using Claude, I recently tried to do something similar for the Covid hiring spree: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/21bba86a-ad5d-439c-861d-0...

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#183

Post by socialcommenter »

aurareturn wrote: post #2

Tokenmaxxing was just a way to force employees to start leveraging AI in a meaningful way. For companies that have measured performance based on token spend, they can now dial it back. Employees have learned to leverage AI for things they wouldn’t have prior. Now they know what’s possible and what’s not. No one is stupid enough to always measure performance based on token spend and have unlimited budget. It was alway…

Interesting take - upvoted you. I'm not convinced it's been the optimal management strategy, but you're succinctly explaining what they have done, not what they should have done, and in that sense you have a good point.

Still leaves huge questions about ROI ($26tln of TAM, anyone???) and doesn't quell the concerns brought forward by AI detractors though.

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#185

Post by TeMPOraL »

panarky wrote: post #158
theanonymousone wrote: post #27

What is meant by a "loop" here? Just repeating the same prompt until you get the desired result? Are subsequent repetitions too close to each other?

> Just repeating the same prompt ... If you were tokenmaxxing you would understand.

Or if you were ever working with an approximation / search / optimization (really they're the same thing) algorithm that iteratively converges on a solution...

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#186

Post by TeriyakiBomb »

cyphar wrote: post #50
SR2Z wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this take. If you're a carpentry shop that just bought power tools for the first time and you're worried that your employees are sticking with hand tools because that's what they know, then you look for sawdust. The goal isn't to have people work at converting wood into sawdust, the point is that if you wanna see if the tools are working you wanna see proof they're actually being used. I'm s…

Why would a carpentry shop buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of power tools without consulting with their employees to see what they actually need to get their job done more effectively? The logic of buying the tools then forcing the employees to use them "or else" is completely backwards in any sane world. (Of course, we've all had bosses that went to some marketing seminar and come back having been tricked^Wsold…

To use your analogy again, it's kind of like the shop boss buying everyone a table saw and then saying "The best way to use the table saw is just experiment with it, it's the fastest and most accurate straight cut we can get - the future is table saw."

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#187

Post by oblio »

SR2Z wrote: post #143
bitwize wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do you actually have a job? Do you talk to your coworkers? This is an insane take. Plenty of people are critical of AI at my job despite a big push to use it. I find the comparison to NK distasteful, coming from someone who presumably is pretty well paid and can quit their job whenever they want. If you're feeling humiliated... well, I don't think it's because your boss wants you to try AI.

> Plenty of people are critical of AI at my job despite a big push to use it.

Are they critical to you and your 10 people team, aka a small circle or are they critical in the all hands Q&A in front of 500 employees?

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#188

Post by oblio »

woah wrote: post #105
cyphar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a carpentry shop buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of power tools without consulting with their employees to see what they actually need to get their job done more effectively? The logic of buying the tools then forcing the employees to use them "or else" is completely backwards in any sane world. (Of course, we've all had bosses that went to some marketing seminar and come back having been tricked^Wsold…

> Why would a carpentry shop buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of power tools without consulting with their employees to see what they actually need to get their job done more effectively? Are you suggesting that changes to new production technologies are always driven bottom up by line workers? I'm guessing that historically that's rare.

Historically that rarely happens because industrial equipment is/was generally too expensive for the average worker to purchase on their own, plus workers usually have a budget of roughly 0 to buy extra tools, especially expensive ones.

But to give you an example, also roughly 0 companies made developers use Linux and still many developers choose it, so bottom up improvements happen in a decent chunk of cases. Nobody paid for PostgreSQL promotion. Or Python, etc.

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#189

Post by oblio »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #107
cyphar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a carpentry shop buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of power tools without consulting with their employees to see what they actually need to get their job done more effectively? The logic of buying the tools then forcing the employees to use them "or else" is completely backwards in any sane world. (Of course, we've all had bosses that went to some marketing seminar and come back having been tricked^Wsold…

> Why would a carpentry shop buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of power tools without consulting with their employees to see what they actually need to get their job done more effectively? The logic of buying the tools then forcing the employees to use them "or else" is completely backwards in any sane world. For one, software tools are cheap, especially with OSS in the mix. You're buying one "tool" and paying for…

> the worthiness of the adoption was blindingly obvious at that point

Everything is so "blindingly obvious" yet nobody can point to ANY serious peer reviewed studies that prove it.

I'm patient, I'll wait.

Re: Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing

#190

Post by oblio »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #170
JoshTriplett wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps don't start out with the conclusion that it's obviously better and anyone rejecting it is just "stubborn".

Nobody started out with that conclusions. The tests and experiments and workshops and consulting with select employees you propose, were all done 2-3 years ago. Results are in, but a chunk of population decides to ignore them and obstinately continue believing and claiming that it doesn't work, which is a conclusion they started out with.

> Results are in

Awesome, can you please share those results? Surely they would be all over Nature, Science, IEEE, etc.

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