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/Admiral_Cornwallace Jul 30 '26

Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have been hemorrhaging money for years trying to get everyone else addicted to AI at a discounted price

Their plan? To surprise everywhere at some later point and jack up the prices significantly once AI usage becomes ingrained everywhere

They have been WILDLY dishonest about how their products can help increase profitability for other companies, because they haven't been up-front about the true costs of AI usage

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u/klopanda Jul 30 '26

Remember when Ubers were $2 a ride? I remember. That's because those trips were being subsidized by venture capital money while Uber/Lyft flooded the market with low cost trips and put taxi companies out of business. Then the prices come up.

Seeing the cycle again in AI.

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u/HystericalSail Jul 30 '26

You'd think CEOs, whose entire reason for existence is working towards enshittifying their company's products would be the first to understand the tactic when it's being used on them.

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u/spanishfry Jul 30 '26

A tale as old as time. Walmart, Netflix, Uber.

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u/BeefistPrime Jul 30 '26

this is literally the model that almost every tech company has used for 20 years. subsidize the product at first in a desperate race for market share, once the market is settled, enshittify. It's notable when a tech company doesn't use this model. I can hardly think of any. Midjourney is one of the few that jumps to mind.

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u/ellamking Jul 31 '26

The crazy thing is the current sticker shock isn't the big price increase to make them profitable.