[stockresearcher]

We use GH Copilot at work and this week sat for a presentation by GH about optimizing token usage and maximizing ROI on tokens used. Anyone else get this presentation? They didn’t have time for questions because they had to run and give it to the next big enterprise on their list…

They basically said that everything is too expensive, you have to watch it like a hawk. It was as if they poured a bucket of cold water on the room. People were wondering how they could do anything faster with all these strategies. And then “sorry no questions. Bye!”

[forgotaccount3]

Interesting. We use Kiro here and looking at the public pricing subscriptions and it's benefit to my workflow, it is clearly a significant productivity increase per dollar spent. And we were told we have a signed a deal that is better than that public pricing. They recently just enabled overages on everyone's account so that people aren't throttled and they are shifting people up/down tiers as required behind the scenes to align with their actual usage.

However when the 'cost' to do something is relatively flat the cost/benefit analysis is going to depend on the value of the person being enabled. Someone making $60k a year using AI to gain a 20% output improvement may not be worth the cost but someone making $160k a year would.

[stogot]

Do you use Kiro specs? I have been loving using Kiro for the same reasons, and and just starting to use the spec feature.

[Esophagus4]

Did you have any good tips for optimizing usage?

The ones I’ve stumbled upon seem to be: switch models based on task complexity, use tooling like ASTs and compression, disable unused MCPs, compact often, be verbose with input to give clear guidance…

[deadeye]

I don't think compacting often is good for saving money. It generates more output tokens and then the input is no longer from cache, which is priced differently...typically very differently.

[tasuki]

> They didn’t have time for questions because they had to run and give it to the next big enterprise on their list…

This is such bullshit. Surely they could have recorded the shared part of the presentation and then spend all their time answering the questions?

[karmakurtisaani]

We did not have any presentation yet, but the first serious discussion about the cost of tokens has started on the documentation level. Looking forward to seeing these presentations!

[spaceman_2020]

Just hire people and pay then a fair wage and let everyone get richer together ffs

When did American capitalism become such a zero sum game

[rickydroll]

When the powers that be decided labor didn't matter and the only thing that mattered was capital.

One will never get rich on wages. The only way to get rich is through asset manipulation and rent-seeking.

[sokoloff]

If you're in a market where a competitor can cut their costs to produce the same quality product, end customers don't know (and if they knew, 95+% of them don't give a crap) how rich you've helped your employees get.

If someone else can make it more efficiently, there's a powerful force for you to also have to improve to match that efficiency.

"Why is the airline experience so much worse than 50 years ago?" "It's massively cheaper per seat-mile, and consumers in aggregate reveal that they prefer the cheapest price that online travel searches, so airlines deliver to that preference."

[digdugdirk]

It's always been this way. America has just been able to coast on being the only remaining major economy after WW2, and exploited the rest of the world instead. That exploitation of the rest of the globe has been mostly optimized now, so those shareholder returns are now coming at the expense of the 90% of Americans who aren't sitting at the table.

[xphos]

I think this is quite reductive. America certainly benefited from being one of 2 major powers after ww2. But unlike the USSR it invested in the world heavily. It rebuilt Allied and Axies manufacturing, and do a lot to revitalize the world economy. They got rich in the process but its not like they did nothing. They invented the internet and cure a ton of diseases. Setup a global order of trade that generates real prosperity.

I guess while I agree that American shareholders do reap incredibly benefits coasting is not really something america does. America is more than just shareholders too. You dont grow the world economy by coasting and you dont make up 25% of the world nominal GDP while only making up ~1/25 its population by coasting its inconsistent with reality.

[dgellow]

And pretty much everything you mentioned that made the USA the leading world power has been atrophied over the past decades

[xphos]

I don't won't to rant politically but I think you are confusing Donald Trump's America Alone with all previous Republicans and Democrats. The idea of us abandoning all alliances and deals for ???? is relatively novel and stupid. The brand of tax cuts and austerity (which are republican coded in my opinion) are what destroyed the UK economy and greatly damaged the US economy (we were more obstinate to full Austerity than any EU country the EU made bad economic decisions in required balanced budgets with rigidity). But we never did abandon our allies completely and step of the world stage. This is what sets a republican like Reagan apart from Trump. I think they are both terrible on the economy but Trump is just a disaster for US alliances and soft power. If the role were swapped than I think their is an incredible likelyhood we would have lost the Cold War. Its just not the same republican party its far far worse strategy.

I know we also argued that WW2 is what allowed the US to coast but I'd argue that New Deal programs that made demand and things cheap (like electric think TVA). This arguablely fuels American industry as it rushes to fill in the WW2 demand. All this investiment happend before WW2 even started and I think doesn't get nearly enough credit for allowing the US to 1 not become facists and 2 allows the US to step in and support the large demand of ww2 and post war. If we didn't invest in the nation we would not meet post-war demand and be much poorier today.

Finally, I don't want to be nilhistic or depressed if we can observer that we did things better at one point we can still choose a future that is better regardless of what mistakes we make today. We can make better choices albet it limited from today's options that will actually allow the US to raise people higher out of poverty. I don't agree with the idea of betting against Americian ingenuity in the long term it tends to lose.

[tayo42]

Can you think of a point in history when it wasn't.

Despite all of the problems that exist were still the best off.