Clearly they need more layoffs, and for that matter why keep anyone around? After all, AI will be writing 100% of code in 2026.
By 2025 we will have AGI and software developers don't be necessary. Also next year we will have self driving.
Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
191–200 of 360 posts
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#192Maybe don't use the most expensive models on the planet? Maybe use AI like a tool and not this black box that grants wishes?
But the executives need the fanciest models to evaluate how well they can replace the expensive labor costs.
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#193[dead]
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#194What if... we stop for a moment, and then, after thinking for a moment, we stop hammering nails with a microscope, and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity? I know it's sounds stupid, but what if
I feel like individually, if you sat down with literally any reasonable person on the planet they would arrive at and/or agree with the tenor here. I'd be curious to hear from people well versed in group psychology/dynamics and/or just a lot of leadership/people experience: what leads people to this type of thinking once they get in a group setting? It just... seems endemic at this point. Obviously nobody here is goi…
This is a consequence of elements of monopoly power existing in your organization. When you don't have to compete for income you honestly forget how. Then the company becomes a cargo cult of bad ideas driven by managers struggling to differentiate themselves.
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a complete lack of courage in the leadership of tech companies today, and top-down AI mandates are just another manifestation. True visionaries think outside the box, but most tech executives are forcing their employees into black boxes, out of fear of not doing exactly what their competitors are doing. We have lemmings for leaders, and that means that—much like the LLMs that are being shoehorned into everyt…
I'm going to offer a contrarian view here: First is that despite a lot of waste, some innovation will arise from an enterprising employee finding some interesting use case. A lot of the tokenmaxxing is just waste, but out of that waste may arise a small number of genuinely powerful use cases. Second is that many workers will be entrenched in their ways. If your executive goal is to achieve the above (find innovative…
> but out of that waste may arise a small number of genuinely powerful use cases.
Imagine you employ me as a hotel manager, and I come to you and say: "sure I spent all our food budget internationally in three months, and sure I have nothing really to show for it, but for those three months, we had a lot of food fights"
Your manager then goes on to explain they not only need more money to cover the food budget, but also they need to quituple the cleaning budget too.
Oh and the service level has dropped, because not all clients liked being in the middle of a food fight.
However "we might have some innovation in the food delivery system of our hotel chain"
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meta tracks token consumption, but has explicitly stated that it is not a primary performance metric. Instead, employees are evaluated on "impact."
Indeed, they also said that previous time off for ill health wasn't a reason either. but looking at the number of people who had taken leave, it suggests otherwise.
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.
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Others have no clue what to do with tokens. Unlimited tokens is different from “use AI a lot or we will fire you, and we are counting token consumption as usage”. Obviously the latter is stupid and yet it was done in many places.
I'm not convinced it actually was done in many places, although I understand why in a bad job market people don't trust that it isn't happening in secret. Every time I've heard of a token leaderboard or such it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric.
> it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric.
Surely the anonymous employee feedback polls are totally anonymous too. BigCorp loves you, is family, and would never harm you.
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#198What if... we stop for a moment, and then, after thinking for a moment, we stop hammering nails with a microscope, and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity? I know it's sounds stupid, but what if
> and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity I participate in some management-focused online communities. It’s crazy how many threads there are from frustrated managers trying to get their teams to stop thinking that their token use will be used as a proxy for their performance. I think a few dumb companies did this and then it spread across social media, triggering a mass panic from engineers afraid thei…
> managers trying to get their teams to stop thinking that their token use will be used as a proxy for their performance.
Because it is going to happen. Do you think metrics are tracked for fun?
Even if current leaders don't do it, next people might do it, how do you tell new leaders that we don't look at this metric? Metric exists to take action based on it
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to offer a contrarian view here: First is that despite a lot of waste, some innovation will arise from an enterprising employee finding some interesting use case. A lot of the tokenmaxxing is just waste, but out of that waste may arise a small number of genuinely powerful use cases. Second is that many workers will be entrenched in their ways. If your executive goal is to achieve the above (find innovative…
> but out of that waste may arise a small number of genuinely powerful use cases. Imagine you employ me as a hotel manager, and I come to you and say: "sure I spent all our food budget internationally in three months, and sure I have nothing really to show for it, but for those three months, we had a lot of food fights" Your manager then goes on to explain they not only need more money to cover the food budget, but a…
> we might have some innovation in the food delivery system of our hotel chain
> Imagine you employ me as a hotel manager, and I come to you and say: "sure I spent all our food budget internationally in three months, and sure I have nothing really to show for it, but for those three months, we had a lot of food fights"
Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
The business. Employees are hesitant to learn new tools that are very different from what they are used to, so if your business believes that AI is a productivity multiplier, it behooves it to incentivize individual employees to learn to use the tool.
I think the key word is “believes”. There is no proof that AI usage improves productivity. Token maxing is essentially customers paying to try and prove a business’s unsubstantiated claim. The AI companies should be proving their claims themselves not the other way around. I do think AI has value and is useful but the idea of token maxing is ridiculous.
Sure; I described it that way deliberately. I think you can reasonably disagree with whether or not AI improves efficiency, but regardless, you can agree that if a business believes AI does, it will logically conclude that it should incentivize employees to learn to use AI.