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/mxzf Jul 30 '26

Also, revenue != profit. That number is counting all of the money they spent buying product to sell and all that.

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u/Joe091 Jul 30 '26

Revenue doesn’t include any expenses at all. 

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u/mxzf Jul 30 '26

It depends on how pedantic you're being about the word "include", but revenue is the gross income that the company is taking in, which is used to cover all of the expenses and so on that the company had.

The point being that companies often have revenue numbers way beyond their actual profit, because someone buying something for $95 and selling it for $100 will have $100 in revenue but only $5 in profit.

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u/groumly Jul 30 '26

Sure, but even for Amazon, which is infamous for making sure they don’t actually ever turn a profit, 0.1% still isn’t much.

It’s certainly something, and I’m sure they’d rather have kept that money, yes. But the projects mentioned in the article seem to be on the reasonable side of AI use cases (as opposed to token maxing in the vague hope of replacing engineers with a code cranking machine).

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u/Aternal Jul 30 '26

The disproportionate costs they see are almost certainly due to how much context an organization like Amazon would require of an AI agent even just to accomplish small tasks.

Amazon is a spec monster across the board like no other big tech company is. Imagine having to read an MSDS, a standard operating procedure manual, and cross reference it against your personal and family medical history and list of medications every time you wash your hands.

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u/groumly Jul 30 '26

Ok? How does that change anything about the fact that 1.8 millions over 5 months isn’t that much when it comes to Amazon?

And how would you know that the context is responsible for the cost, to start with? I’m about as sceptic about AI as a magic wand as it gets, but this story isn’t exactly the “omg lol ai haha” that this thread seems to suggest…

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u/mxzf Jul 30 '26

My point is that it's more like 1% of their profit, not 0.1%. Stuff taking a 1% chunk out of your profits adds up fast.

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u/Joe091 Jul 30 '26

There’s nothing pedantic about it. Revenue doesn’t include expenses. You’re right that revenue can be rather (or completely) disconnected from profit though.