[zoogeny]

This is a contrarian view and I am a biased AI-maximalist. But I actually think these kinds of results are genuinely important.

There is a lot of frustration and even anger over CEOs pushing AI onto employees and some schadenfreude when it goes wrong. But there is some element of "fail fast" happening here.

I am glad wealthy corporations are footing the bill by stretching this technology to its limit. The fact of the matter is, we don't know how effective the best-of-the-best models are at scale.

There is a feeling that once we figure out how to leverage these agents, we'll see explosive growth. It's just going to cost a lot of money figuring it out.

It seems that for now, handing over 100% of code writing to LLMs is going to be too expensive. Cost per token for equivalent code is too high.

[josefritzishere]

I have a feeling it's not going to be magic and will obey the laws of Supply and Demand like all other tech products; further that it's hugely over valued and is going to crash like a meteor before it's over. But we'll all find out together, right?

[zoogeny]

Yes, right now all we have are vibes/feelings. My point was that one benefit of the hype and the "CEO psychosis" is that we'll find out together fast. Uber, and companies like it, have the money to take the kind of risk that accelerates learning.

And the first data point is in your favor, kind of. I mean, Uber engineers were sufficiently incentivized to use the tokens they were given. It isn't easy to determine what the exact motivation was. What might result from this latest round of CEO backtracking is either relief (don't have to pretend to use AI anymore) or frustration (upset at a useful tool being taken away).

There are two possible stories here. One, they forced everyone to use AI and didn't get enough benefit to justify the cost. Two, they gave the opportunity to their employees to use unlimited AI and those employees jumped at the chance with a vigor that management didn't expect.

All we really know is that value per token must have been low enough to cause this change.

[uggghhhhh]

> I am a biased AI-maximalist

When oh when will HN develop shame?