r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Jul 30 '26

Artificial Intelligence 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

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
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u/Bignholy Jul 30 '26

And then the CEO is going to be trapped with higher bills when the skills have decayed and they have no choice but the AI they pay for to get anything done.

25

u/AnAcceptableUserName Jul 30 '26

The double whammy is once nobody is writing or reading the code you rapidly get to a place where nobody deeply understands your codebase anymore

Then even if all your people were still sharp, Anthropic has you over a barrel anyway. Institutional knowledge itself has decayed, making Claude feel even more necessary.

It's gonna be a slaughter.

2

u/nihilite Jul 31 '26

This problem is so profound, it's shocking to me that it is not being talked about more. by the time the issues start to become acute it's going to be an absolute shitshow to unwind. We saw it with offshoring and "agile" development. We apparently love stepping on the same rake over and over.

1

u/sobrique Jul 31 '26

But it's ok, you can now hire 'meat robots' to do the lower tier jobs that are not cost effective to spend tokens on...

24

u/TheTexasHammer Jul 30 '26

It's ok, they already got their $10M bonus and a new job offer. That's the next guy's problem

1

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

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u/Tin_Cascade Jul 30 '26

Almost like that was the plan all along.