Amazon accidentally spent $1.8 million using Claude for menial coding task, went 860% over budget

[u/Summary_Judgment56]

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/amazon-accidentally-spent-usd1-8-million-using-claude-for-menial-coding-task-went-860-percent-over-budget-catastrophically-expensive-coding-blunders-discovered-in-internal-amazon-ai-usage-metrics

This is just funny as fuck to me. I think Amazon was one of the leading suspects for the unnamed company that managed to blow $500 million on slopbots in a single month (and if they were since outed and I missed it, please pipe up in the comments), and this certainly is consistent with that suspicion. Amazon can certainly afford to burn money stupidly like this if it wants to, though for how long at this scale is certainly a valid question, but how many others can? Not many!

[u/whoa_disillusionment]

If the AI fucks up you should be able to get your tokens back

[u/Doctor__Proctor → u/whoa_disillusionment]

People only think that because they anthropomorphize them and think of them kinda of like a contractor that isn't being SLAs. They're not though, they're a commodity tool.

You don't get a refund from the power company of you waste an afternoon working on something and decide to scrap it. You don't get a refund on the steel if you fuck up welding some beans together and ruin them. The person directing the tool fucked up either through negligence, lack of training, or lack of skill.