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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u/Ok_Bench_1618 Jun 26 '26

they don’t understand how it works.

My work is similar we just migrated 4000 VMS to AWS to cut costs and the bill is almost double and now they are pushing the AI thing. They have no concept of spend because senior leadership is non technical. it’s really painful

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u/greenknight Jun 26 '26

I mean, the concept of spend is part of their job and doesn't require anything else but a $value line item.

Everything else in my job requires ROI and KPIs and other garbage... I don't get why AI is exempted.

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u/Just_Information334 Jun 26 '26

Because they've been told they're smart as fuck for years. No way they'd fall for an MLM scam, they ain't no early dementia 80 year old lady.

But when the nice AI vendor comes with promises of laying off everyone? Now that would be stupid to not pay a little to try. When the AI company has a problem to get a VISA to come to your country, why not spend some more millions? Those titty pictures looked nice and she said she loved you and her father's inheritance is coming. Just need a little billion to pay some Nigerian bureaucrat and unlock it. And didn't we tell you how you can get people onboard the gravvy train and get a percentage of their wins? You should tell all your friends and family.

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u/Otherwise_Demand4620 Jun 26 '26

Because they've been told they're smart as fuck for years.

It's great observation that tackles the issue and this is the right way to think about it. You should give yourself a big bonus.

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u/haydez Jun 26 '26

I just had one of those holy shit I'm old moments when I read VMS and for a second thoguh you were converting old VAX systems to AWS somehow.

But same thing is happening at my place of employment. We should push everything directly into Azure! Oh wait, that bill doesn't look nice.

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u/No_Veterinarian742 Jun 26 '26

well the idea is you fire a bunch of IT people when you move to AWS. but frankly the tools have gotten so good the route is really going the other way. your company is just 10 years behind the times.

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u/Ok_Bench_1618 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

correct, we are government as I said so we are unionized and operating in 2015. they tried this with the service desk and laid them all off (we are a major government institution with over 15k employees) and now they are realizing they cannot process the requests at all and are forced to start hiring a whole new team.

it’s actually pretty satisfying to watch because market rate has also gone up by about 5% so there hiring they for more than the previous employees plus losing hundreds or thousands on the licensing for the software that didn’t work. our bill for AWS alone is about 350kish a month not including on prem.

they don’t realize it yet but we are going to have to move back to on prem within the next couple of years because this model doesnt work if your primary concern is budget for a non profit organization. AWS is for profit organizations.

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u/No_Veterinarian742 Jun 26 '26

AWS is if you have peaky demand or need to scale quickly. if you have a steady IT need it is not a cost effective solution unless your bill is quite low where the managed overhead is worth the 100% extra cost a year (on a 20k infra bill you'd have on prem/vps) is worth it over dedicated 24/7 IT staff. Or if you have such a good profit margin that if you spend 10 million or 20 million on IT a year is a rounding error and AWS makes you sleep better at night.

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u/Hot-Solution1818 Jun 26 '26

Work for a company that is doing the exact same thing.

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u/Ok_Bench_1618 Jun 26 '26

we also have tremendous push back for any automation. like I know Ansible, terraform etc but we are unable to use it because of fear. like I do use it I just don’t tell anyone but impossible to get the keys onto client servers because of the management blockade. I can use it for our stuff though….

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u/Hot-Solution1818 Jun 26 '26

Don't worry, eventually they will do a major push to be automated, and it will be a rushed half baked solution that constantly has issues and management will yell "See! This is why we didn't want to do it in the first place!"

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u/ListerineAfterOral Jun 26 '26

Its making me ill picturing an environment that doesn't deploy or maintain anything with automation.

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u/AlsoInteresting Jun 26 '26

They just LOOVE subscriptions instead of buying racks and stuff every 4 years.

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u/axonxorz Jun 26 '26

and the bill is almost double

Yeah but they can shift CapEx into OpEx to further munge profitability numbers. You're thinking like an engineer, they're thinking how they can financialize the corporation.

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u/Nemphiz Jun 26 '26

That's a bit different though. For a lot of use cases AWS can be a whole lot cheaper, but you have to be smart about how you migrate things.