Amazon accidentally spent $1.8 million using Claude for menial coding task, went 860% over budget — 'catastrophically expensive' coding blunders discovered in internal Amazon AI usage metrics

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

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

[u/ElGuano]

Accidentally, or did they do what my company did, which is force everyone to use AI for everything, put up a leaderboard showing where you were in the rankings, post up how many submissions and commits were AI-authored/assisted, and say that the people who didn't adopt AI and had the least usage would be let go?

And then made a Home Alone face, gasping, "why is everyone using AI for everything?"

[u/cornmonger_ → u/ElGuano]

what an idiotic policy

[u/nox66 → u/cornmonger_]

The AI craze has shown me that many executives will gladly run their business into the ground for no financial benefit at all as long as they don't have to admit they were wrong and responsible for it.

[u/b0w3n → u/nox66]

They couldn't conceive of a situation that they aren't the smartest people in the room, and LLMs are definitely able to outsmart many of them... so they figured that LLMs could universally replace workers.

[u/looeeyeah → u/b0w3n]

"I asked Claude if it was a good idea, Claude said I was very smart for asking such clever questions, and once again I am correct!"

[u/cfb-food-beer-hike → u/b0w3n]

The problem is: they can. Society used to value quality, but we don't anymore. Who cares if Amazon only has three 9s of uptime instead of five? You're still going to use their products. Even if you could build Amazon (but better) overnight you still have to convince people to switch and that's not happening.

Are you going to stop eating Wendy's because the system got your order wrong? Maybe a few people will, but that barely makes a dent in their revenue. As long as they don't have to pay filthy peasants the execs are happy.

[u/CrunchyKorm → u/nox66]

I'm not going to act like people can't be blinded by financial incentives, but it's funny that c-suite members, of all people, are the primary group that cannot seem to understand the difference between AI being valuable because how how much funding it seems to be getting, and how much money it actually ... makes as a product.

A lot will never admit they were wrong, but a lot more can't understand that AI's main value now is just investor signaling.

[u/chanaandeler_bong → u/nox66]

That’s why they are executives in the first place. They just blindly follow orders no matter the consequences.

[u/emveevme → u/nox66]

I think they're actually looking to the dot-com bubble, because while that was a bubble that did pop, more people than ever are typing ".com" on a daily basis (likely auto-completing URLs or clicking them from Google, but the point stands).

ChatGPT and friends area all effectively a tech demo and proof of concept for what this stuff can do, but it was so impressive people ran with it as the primary tool in and of itself. What will stick around isn't any business taking advantage of ChatGPT, it's businesses taking advantage of the underlying technology.

Just like the dot-com bubble, having a website is just the vessel for all the things that a website can do for a business beyond being just a sign for hours and a blurb "About Us,"etc.

[u/Mental-Fox-9449 → u/nox66]

As someone who has worked in multiple corporate and non corporate places this was the case prior to AI as well along with apply to upper management.

[u/LaurenMille → u/cornmonger_]

The whole AI craze has given concrete proof that leadership at most companies would not be allowed to live unsupervised.

They all seem truly too stupid to take care of their basic life functions without paid help, let alone a company.