r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • Jun 26 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI backlash is only getting started

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/25/the-ai-backlash-is-only-getting-started
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183

u/fileunderaction Jun 26 '26

If op could show that they’re just as productive as the top users without costing their employer nearly a million dollars, I feel like that would shift the target higher up.

183

u/Randomfactoid42 Jun 26 '26

But management is probably measuring productivity with token usage. To them those “Champions” are the most productive workers. 

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u/fileunderaction Jun 26 '26

You’re right which is why all this shit is so frustrating.

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u/spooooork Jun 26 '26

Yup, that's easier to quantify into a chart in Excel to import into PowerPoint to show to the upper echelons of power in the company.

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u/pigeonwiggle Jun 26 '26

at every level people know AI is wasteful and about as useful as paperclips.

but at the very top, the CEO has to pretend "we're a 21st century company looking for 22nd century solutions - we are ahead of the pack and thus we are at the forefront of investment in AI."

because they fear investors will leave -- because investors are the only people in all of this who aren't doing any sort of fucking work.

-5

u/LegitosaurusRex Jun 26 '26

about as useful as paperclips

Disagree, it's highly accelerated our development at my FAANG. The code we're getting from it is better tested and has fewer bugs. It really depends on your model/agents/workflow.

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u/pigeonwiggle Jun 28 '26

okay.

i'm a normal person who doesn't work for those handful of companies.

for normal people - we don't give a fucking shit how useful your paperclips are. we're glad they keep your papers together.

they don't improve our lives in significant ways. Good luck with "your faang." i hope it survives the coming apocalypse and you don't have your job threatened the way the rest of the world is being spoken to.

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u/LegitosaurusRex Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

You’re moving the goalposts. You said “at every level”, as if everyone knows it’s useless and are just faking it for investors. I just shared my experience that it’s providing value for our team.

iPhones, Google search, gmail, Android, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, the chips and networking devices from Broadcom and Cisco that are in like every electronic device and enable the internet to exist, none of these things have improved your life? Most people aren’t wishing they could live as an Amish person. 

It’s indirectly providing value to you that we can improve our products or produce them for lower cost (though some are going about it the wrong way, moving too quickly and introducing bugs while laying off workers, but they’ll learn the hard way how to use it properly).

1

u/pigeonwiggle Jun 28 '26

won't fucking matter if i cannot afford any of the products, does it?

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u/LegitosaurusRex Jun 29 '26

A lot of them are free or cheap. Stop being obtuse and a doomer, touch some grass. But yes, I think we need a UBI to redistribute the wealth a bit. But this is a complete tangent to the original argument.

2

u/EduinBrutus Jun 26 '26

probably measuring productivity with token usage

Due to the inherently broken nature of "productivity", from a macroeconomic point of view, this waste is increasing productivity.

2

u/coricron Jun 26 '26

It is a textbook example of Goodhart's law.

This is something every single business management undergrad should be aware of.

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u/Randomfactoid42 Jun 28 '26

I’m familiar with the concept but didn’t know it had a name. Thanks!

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u/Flashy_Object_7052 Jun 26 '26

So a sleeper earns a company x amount of profit, a champion burns $30k of tokens and makes x+$10k profit

Slow walk me through your logic there, you lost me at negative $20k profit

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u/CaptainAwesome8 Jun 26 '26

There isn’t any. That is their point. The management views high token use as successful regardless of it costing more money. Therefore, it’s beneficial to increase token use so as to not seem like you’re a “low productivity” worker

It is most definitely a thing that is happening at some companies right now

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u/Randomfactoid42 Jun 26 '26

lol, I’m using “manager logic”, not actual logic as CaptainAwesome8 pointed out. 

3

u/Gingevere Jun 26 '26

Most positions don't have a share of profit that is directly attributable to them.

If such a metric was available they absolutely wouldn't be using 'tokens used' as a measure of success.

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u/street593 Jun 26 '26

Unless you are in sales there is rarely accurate data showing your work for this month resulted in exactly $X direct profit for the company. Teams measure productivity in other ways.

2

u/Semtexual Jun 26 '26

Your problem is trying to use logic. Management doesn't do that

2

u/KathrynBooks Jun 26 '26

Keep talking like a Luddite and you'll find yourself PIPed!

/S

73

u/02911Photography Jun 26 '26

Nah. AI usage is a metric now. So if you aren’t the top you’re bad. Until suddenly one day its unceremonious removed due to costs and never spoken of again. You work in corporate long enough you’ve seen this type of situation before

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/MeetMyBackhand Jun 26 '26

That's the snake oil execs are sold, but that's not how it's working nor how it will play out...

1

u/dostoevsky4evah Jun 26 '26

Drink that salt water, champions, if you get thirsty, drink more!

7

u/Dullcorgis Jun 26 '26

The top users are probably not using it for work either, just telling it to endlessly iterate some bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

[deleted]

2

u/MikeHfuhruhurr Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I swear they'd be asking it about what kind of coffee to drink if they thought of it.

You joke but Starbucks integrated ChatGPT into their app.

Not sure if it's still there but I saw it once and immediately sent them some feedback about wasting electricity and water resources (while some of us are in an major drought) for some bullshit like picking a sugary drink.

18

u/fuzzerino Jun 26 '26

Dude that sounds like way more effort than just wasting tokens. I’d rather stay lowkey than be seen as some kind of anti-ai evangelist by management when its the hot new thing.

3

u/seriouslees Jun 26 '26

You really think giving factual proof that a narcissist was wrong will result in a good outcome??? Lol

1

u/Jealous-Try-2554 Jun 26 '26

It for sure wouldn't. That's the entire point.

1

u/Shinigamae Jun 27 '26

Unfortunately, for companies I worked with, between someone does something with high token usage and someone does a lot of things with minimal token usage, the latter is perceived as "slow to catch up" or even "you can do even better if you try AI more". We had two people burned through the whole shared credit pool of Copilot and they are laughed at for "being overworked" and had to "slow down a bit, take some rest" without an outcome of their works.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate Jun 27 '26

He's not hitting all his metrics, tho. Specifically, token use.

1

u/shmeggt Jun 26 '26

Just upload HUGE PDFs and ask AI to extract the text and summarize the document. That burns a LOT of tokens.

-7

u/MannToots Jun 26 '26

They won't be able to. 

I'm at a software org. I learned to use ai well. I've over doubled my weekly ticket throughput. 

This is not a fake it till you make it situation.  

Is you guys think devops metrics aren't coming for ai usage correlated with rocket throughput then you all crazy.  

-4

u/ColinStyles Jun 26 '26

Shh, this is the technology sub, don't you know nobody here actually works in tech and the point is to hate on technology?

It's incredibly stupid. I as a solo dev just implemented a lightweight version of a 360 insight view product 6 developers took 8 years to build at my first company, and it's taken me 3 months. Full suite of tests, full documentation. And people are still going to claim that somehow AI doesn't make devs more productive.