4 ms·

Companies only want to spend money on AI in order to save more money somewhere else. So if LLMs make some tasks easier but overall don't make a big dent on ship

by chrsw 5mo ago

Companies only want to spend money on AI in order to save more money somewhere else. So if LLMs make some tasks easier but overall don't make a big dent on shipping dates because of all the friction points you mentioned, and more, then it will be difficult to justify buying all these tokens. Even if the shipping timelines are the same but the quality goes up that still could be hard to justify token spend too.

fg3fg 5mo ago
Earnings growth, cash flows and valuation. Thats all the management at firms care about. Sorry for all the dev's here who rant about productivity gains but forget what matters to who employs them in the first place!
- PearlRiver 5mo ago
  The people ponying up the cash expect a return on their investment- they are not in it for the religious experience.
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
  But it's not going to happen. There may be some localised productivity gains, but in many of these businesses cracks will appear over the next 6-12 months as an all-AI pipeline becomes unfeasibly expensive and there's no corresponding earnings growth. These CEOs have no clue how their companies work. They're in the driving seat of a machine they don't understand, they've been sold corporate FSD, they've turned it on like kids playing with a shiny toy, and they're about to discover it's been oversold, underbudgeted, and doesn't work yet.
  - convolvatron 5mo ago
    decades of excess capital have raised company leaders that have bought into structural delusions like 'accounts are all the matter', or 'headcounts are all that matter', and the market has rewarded them for that. Or at least ignored failure because the supply was really quite low. Remember when we all laughed at the .com companies that were going to revolutionize pet food delivery? that never went away, we just normalized it. Very little of this has been based on cost v. revenue just forever. So it's no surprise that they are a little stunned that by following what everyone says is the future things aren't just going swimmingly. The usual reaction is to just blame your team, that's easy.
- pydry 5mo ago
  Not true at all. They do care about what's fashionable and right now what is fashionable is AI. Just because they're in charge of multi billion dollar corporations doesn't mean that they don't get distracted by shiny baubles like a 3 year old or that they don't feel the pressure of being "cool" like a teenager. They're not LLMs.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fg3fg 5mo ago
    [dead]
tunesmith 5mo ago
In practice, it's more like companies want to spend money on AI because they believe it will save money somewhere else. If instead they see extra cost, then they get all confused. They can't bring themselves to believe that in their particular case maybe the benefit isn't worth the cost; they're axiomatically conditioned to believe they have to keep using it, and so therefore they have to make cuts somewhere else. It's insane. I went through this personally. I had a glut of project ideas I wanted to get through. I signed up for the $200/month thing. I caught up. My agent sat idle. It was hard to decide to cut my plan. I felt initial pressure to search and hunt for other ideas to code, ideas that were pretty stupid. I finally downscaled my plan; I got hold of myself. But that's easier to do for an individual than it is for a company. In normal economic theory it's easier to understand. You're at a particular scale. You have the opportunity to automate, but does it make sense for you? I could go out and buy a riding mower right now, but my lawn is less than a quarter acre. The riding mower lets me scale up, but I don't have something that can benefit from it.
thunky 5mo ago
> it will be difficult to justify buying all these tokens I'll pay for my own tokens if it means can work one hour per day instead of 8.
- ffsm8 5mo ago
  Most Jobs I've worked at would've forbidden the use of personal subscriptions like that, as you'd be effectively uploading their intellectual property to foreign actors. This can end with more then a termination - as in being literally liable/on the hook for serious contract violations. So ymmv, you may want to take care with such an approach
  - thunky 5mo ago
    I didn't mean to do it sneakily, I meant to be straight up with the employer and offer to pay for the subscription if they won't.

by chrsw 5mo ago

fg3fg 5mo ago

Earnings growth, cash flows and valuation. Thats all the management at firms care about. Sorry for all the dev's here who rant about productivity gains but forget what matters to who employs them in the first place!

PearlRiver 5mo ago
The people ponying up the cash expect a return on their investment- they are not in it for the religious experience.
TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
But it's not going to happen. There may be some localised productivity gains, but in many of these businesses cracks will appear over the next 6-12 months as an all-AI pipeline becomes unfeasibly expensive and there's no corresponding earnings growth. These CEOs have no clue how their companies work. They're in the driving seat of a machine they don't understand, they've been sold corporate FSD, they've turned it on like kids playing with a shiny toy, and they're about to discover it's been oversold, underbudgeted, and doesn't work yet.
- convolvatron 5mo ago
  decades of excess capital have raised company leaders that have bought into structural delusions like 'accounts are all the matter', or 'headcounts are all that matter', and the market has rewarded them for that. Or at least ignored failure because the supply was really quite low. Remember when we all laughed at the .com companies that were going to revolutionize pet food delivery? that never went away, we just normalized it. Very little of this has been based on cost v. revenue just forever. So it's no surprise that they are a little stunned that by following what everyone says is the future things aren't just going swimmingly. The usual reaction is to just blame your team, that's easy.
pydry 5mo ago
Not true at all. They do care about what's fashionable and right now what is fashionable is AI. Just because they're in charge of multi billion dollar corporations doesn't mean that they don't get distracted by shiny baubles like a 3 year old or that they don't feel the pressure of being "cool" like a teenager. They're not LLMs.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- fg3fg 5mo ago
  [dead]

tunesmith 5mo ago

In practice, it's more like companies want to spend money on AI because they believe it will save money somewhere else. If instead they see extra cost, then they get all confused. They can't bring themselves to believe that in their particular case maybe the benefit isn't worth the cost; they're axiomatically conditioned to believe they have to keep using it, and so therefore they have to make cuts somewhere else. It's insane. I went through this personally. I had a glut of project ideas I wanted to get through. I signed up for the $200/month thing. I caught up. My agent sat idle. It was hard to decide to cut my plan. I felt initial pressure to search and hunt for other ideas to code, ideas that were pretty stupid. I finally downscaled my plan; I got hold of myself. But that's easier to do for an individual than it is for a company. In normal economic theory it's easier to understand. You're at a particular scale. You have the opportunity to automate, but does it make sense for you? I could go out and buy a riding mower right now, but my lawn is less than a quarter acre. The riding mower lets me scale up, but I don't have something that can benefit from it.

thunky 5mo ago

> it will be difficult to justify buying all these tokens I'll pay for my own tokens if it means can work one hour per day instead of 8.

ffsm8 5mo ago
Most Jobs I've worked at would've forbidden the use of personal subscriptions like that, as you'd be effectively uploading their intellectual property to foreign actors. This can end with more then a termination - as in being literally liable/on the hook for serious contract violations. So ymmv, you may want to take care with such an approach
- thunky 5mo ago
  I didn't mean to do it sneakily, I meant to be straight up with the employer and offer to pay for the subscription if they won't.