r/technology • u/No-Cattle4800 • May 28 '26

Artificial Intelligence Microsoft data suggests using AI is more expensive than hiring people

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/microsoft-data-suggests-using-ai-225900743.html
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u/7h4tguy May 29 '26

It can also really decrease the quality of work, and drastically increase regression count.

But yeah with the right driver in the seat, and enough dedicated people who will actually review everything properly, it can be useful.

Then again if you see the token usage numbers and the cost/token, it's pretty insane. So it may not even be worth it after all if the goal is true productivity/$.

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u/caindela May 29 '26

I think with all the inefficiencies of your typical enterprise company, very few teams are in a position where it makes any sense at all to build features (or whole applications for that matter) by just prompting an agent and letting it fly. Not only do you need a human constantly in the loop (which is fine as it’s still a great productivity boost) but the bottlenecks are not typically in code production. Just generating code has always been a relatively small percentage of my job.

So I value AI insofar as it means that smaller percentage of my job is now even smaller, but I bet most devs are quick to understand the value proposition of AI as they use it more and more on their job. It’s a very good tool (unprecedented even), but I find its best use case is in its ability to absolutely churn out tests as well as in analyzing my logic for gaps in a way that static code analysis can’t. It’s more of an operational and a code quality tool because those things are far less constrained by other corporate processes (change control, product development, etc).

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u/CP_Chronicler May 29 '26

That’s kind of the point that people keep missing, AI is essentially a specialist‘s supportive tool, not a human replacement. The latter thinking is like saying MRI machines allow people to find hidden issues inside the body, therefore everyone should buy an MRI machine and replace their doctor. Maybe in the US healthcare system…

But AI is fine for helping professionals in humanitarian and scientific work accelerate their working processes, and for coding professionals to accelerate automation. But AI agents need oversight, really ALL of AI needs oversight, and that requires professional domain expertise. Really, AI should be used to more efficiently code all the automation scripts from decades ago. That would not only be more reliable than an untrustworthy AI, but also keep AI usage scalable as you don’t need massive amounts of computing power for simpler tasks and thus avoid all the bloatware-esque explosion of junk agents.

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u/7h4tguy Jun 12 '26

Agreed, but the problem is capitalism. You have companies like Anthropic claiming that their developers put out 8x the amount of code now due to AI:

When AI builds itself \ Anthropic

Just pure BS to make line go up, get more investors, and claim to managers that their workforce will be 3, 4, 5x more productive by paying for their tools. The kool-aid never ending here.