[Legend2440]

>Somehow this fragment turned into headlines like Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify the money spent on AI tokenmaxxing, because the market for stories about AI failures remains enormous.

I notice this all over the place. Many people hate AI and want it to fail, and they're willing to invent misinformation if it supports that idea.

[hansmayer]

Well, it is a big news when the COO of Uber says it no? Not quite some small consultancy shop here.

[Legend2440]

But the COO did not say that. The headline was deliberately misrepresenting what he said.

[uncivilized]

The article was posted on HN and discussed a day or two ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268871

[hansmayer]

No, he said exactly that, if you remove the corporate sanitised language designed to not offend the Uber CTO.

[simonw]

I think you're putting way too much weight into what one person said in unprepared remarks at the 27 minute mark in a 32 minute podcast conversation.

[philipwhiuk]

Unprepared remarks are the best source of info frankly.

[hansmayer]

That "one" person is the COO of Uber. And the other one - the one based on whose statement about burning through yearly AI budget in the first few months - the whole discussion sprung up internally at Uber in the first place is the bloody CTO of that huge company. So yes, their words do have A TON OF WEIGHT. Thats why they are in such important positions, arent they? They're not quite the Derek from the pub, casually commenting on how Liverpool will fare this season.

[simonw]

I think the way people reacted to those statements was entirely out of proportion to what was said.

I repeat: a CTO saying that they spent their entire AI budget for 2026 when that budget was clearly set in 2025 before anyone knew what those November models + harnesses were capable of is entirely unsurprising. Any analysis that doesn't also point out the difference between 2025 and 2026 era coding agents is either ignorant or deliberately misleading.