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AI sticker shock hits corporate America

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Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#21

Post by CuriouslyC »

6stringmerc wrote: post #7
CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

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 the cost to do productive work, and the proportion of work which is actually productive.

GPT5.5 medium is ~20% the cost of Opus and 27% the cost of Sonnet on a task by task basis. That's a material difference.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#22

Post by Arodex »

kombookcha wrote: post #14
SupLockDef wrote: post #8

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…

>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.

It's not baffling. They are a caste, wholly insulated from the consequences of their own actions.

Almost every company is run in a basic dictatorial way. We almost never discuss it, when there is a wide corpus of political Science analysing the pros and cons of governance models that certainly puts it at the bottom.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#23

Post by pjc50 »

swader999 wrote: post #17

"An AI consultant tells Axios one of their clients recently spent half a billion dollars in a single month after failing to put usage limits on Claude licenses for employees." Like physically, how could this even happen?

Agents. An agent is a system for spinning up processes that use tokens, talking to other processes that use tokens.

I wonder how many megawatts that waste represented. Just one guy, worse than a small air force of private jets.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#24

Post by customguy »

mayhemducks wrote: post #15
CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

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…

> 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.

If you work for NVIDIA, sure, but otherwise, this makes no sense to me.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#25

Post by kombookcha »

Arodex wrote: post #22
kombookcha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. It's not baffling. They are a caste, wholly insulated from the consequences of their own actions. Almost every company is run in a ba…

I should have perhaps said "galling" instead.

After ejecting anyone who spoke out or were even publicly hesistant against the hard swerve into "just do maximal amounts of AI stuff above all else", they're now surprised to find that everyone that remains is dutifully excited about the emperor's new clothes, and yet he remains mysteriously exposed to the breeze.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#27

Post by qsort »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

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 with you that people are insanely hyped about Claude Code in particular when e.g. Codex isn't far behind (and with recent models I actually prefer it).

But I'm going to need a citation for this:

> a lot of GenZ and young Millenials who were already bitter at their employers have used the tokenmaxxing push to sabotage the AI

The 3 people on reddit doing this don't even register on a company budget. What seems more plausible to me is that budgets were calibrated to spending before agents were actually useful, and late '25/early '26 changed the pattern significantly.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#28

Post by Balinares »

Overheard recently: "Thanks to AI we're producing more code and more MRs, faster than ever, but the milestones aren't getting hit any sooner. Actually the opposite, if anything."

I wonder how widespread that phenomenon is. Perhaps it's no wonder the prominent actors are trying to rush to IPO...

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#29

Post by mystraline »

Well, if AI has a massive sticker shock attributed, so we should target the high value roles and should save money, right?

So im looking at CEO, CTO, CFO, and all the chief-something-officer. If LLMs are that totally amazing at thinking, then we should be targeting upper management, not the workers.

That would save a LOT of money for the shareholders! /snark

We all know why they wont.

Re: AI sticker shock hits corporate America

#30

Post by 59percentmore »

Arodex wrote: post #22
kombookcha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. It's not baffling. They are a caste, wholly insulated from the consequences of their own actions. Almost every company is run in a ba…

>They are a caste

Sometimes literally.

(Meaning that it's not just business school indoctrination, but a dynamic they've been raised to expect and uphold. Fixing it isn't simply about convincing them of the folly of their approach, because you're attacking their personal sense of self in doing so. Which, I'm to understand, is a no-no, professionally.)

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