16 comments

  • scronkfinkle 44 minutes ago
    The title seems misleading, and reading the article explains the reason more clearly. There's nonsense OKR's and objectives at these companies to burn as many tokens as possible. It turns out that when you make a metric out of token usage, it unsurprisingly ends up becoming extremely expensive.

    Inference is affordable, and you don't need a SOTA proprietary model to get a lot of use out of this technology. While you likely will still need a human engineer for quite a while longer, I don't agree that some number of humans + an LLM is going to be (or will ever remain) more expensive than just hiring more humans.

    • andwur 32 minutes ago
      They may as well have just said: Company institutes an OKR that the IT division must spend over $1000/day/developer (fictious number). Company is surprised when IT division is costing far more than it did before. Company increases this to $1500/day/developer to build a system to identify why this has happened.

      I feel like vibe coding is less of an issue than vibe leadership at this point, and vibe leadership has nothing inherently to do with AI. These people are getting a vague feeling in their giblets, and then chasing it to the illogical conclusion no matter the cost or outcome.

    • olalonde 6 minutes ago
      Also, from the article it seems they just switched from one LLM (Claude Code) to another one (GitHub Copilot) rather than abandoning "AI"...
    • repeekad 4 minutes ago
      But aren’t the revenue numbers that have investors foaming at the teeth based on that “tokens as a metric” world? It can’t be both an explosive growth business and also only ROI with more disciplined spend.
    • baron816 23 minutes ago
      The media seems hellbent on torching AI. My news feeds are nothing but stories about the evils of data centers, how useless AI is, and how much everyone hates it.
      • ian_j_butler 0 minutes ago
        The media is hellbent on torching it, and on propping it up against all reason too, both things can be true. HN is no exception. It's another noisy room problem where the distortion in dialogue is rapidly leading to a distorted reality. https://thenoisyroom.com/

        For people who are actually interested in reality, participation is the mainstream discourse either way is a strategic error. The best thing to do is to check out from all of it, actually read the literature and listen to the technical heros who are working at the edge, and stop reading the pro/anti marketing noise from the media or corporate PR

      • sysguest 0 minutes ago
        well datacenters should go near power plants or cool mountain areas

        for ML training loads, it just doesn't make sense to build them near residential areas for few millisecs

    • alexwwang 8 minutes ago
      I am afraid that the TL would be uncomfortable if they have no human team members but only agents, which means they have no space to pass the bulk and have to take responsibilities for the business results.
    • leecommamichael 36 minutes ago
      I kind of doubt they ever needed the number of humans they have, but I am genuinely open to being wrong about that.
  • bentcorner 23 minutes ago
    The premise of this article is incorrect - MS isn't cancelling Claude code internal usage because of AI costs too much, they're cancelling it because GitHub copilot is the compete product and they want their employees to use their product.

    It's the same reason Teams got so much attention during lockdown.

  • baigy 11 minutes ago
    The 'tokenmaxxing' trend is probably the more inane ideas emanating out of this whole AI wave. It goes in the opposite direction of efficiency and productivity maximization. Yet, it has wide acceptance.
  • missedthecue 45 minutes ago
    Literally nowhere in the article does Microsoft report AI is more expensive than paying human employees.
    • tovej 37 minutes ago
      There may be a word missing in the post title. Should be "Microsoft reports show AI is more expensive...".

      The fact that AI is more expensive still comes through, even though Microsoft does not state this explicitly.

  • Shitty-kitty 8 minutes ago
    Burning tokens is as easy as throwing dollars in a furnace. Token usage is not a good measure of productivity. Problem is nobody has really been able to figure out how to gauge productive AI engagement. Are your developers maximizing productivity or are they burning tokens or resisting change.
  • holoduke 0 minutes ago
    Somehow this 'ai companies will never be profitable' is believed by so many. It's often used by those who don't like AI. There is no doubt that ai is the most lucrative business currently out there. It will only get better. Faster hardware, better algorithms
  • nreece 55 minutes ago
  • ChicagoDave 12 minutes ago
    When you unleash it without a plan or discipline, they are correct.

    With discipline, it’s an aggregator.

    https://devarch.ai/

  • henry2023 15 minutes ago
    The premise of the title is wrong. AI is not more expensive than paying a human employee, simply AI is not capable of replacing a human employee yet.
  • nullbio 17 minutes ago
    Taalas: https://taalas.com/products/

    They've made a hardware LLM that reaches over 14k TPS on Llama 3.1 8B, and you can try it here: https://chatjimmy.ai/

    So clearly hardware LLMs are the future, and the cost will be drastically reduced. But I know that all the AI labs want to create a perception of high prices forever.

  • chopete3 32 minutes ago
    >> Microsoft has reportedly begun canceling most of its direct Claude Code licenses

    Hearsay information and click bait.

  • lacy_tinpot 23 minutes ago
    Say AI is very expensive and costs a lot. What happens when no one can or is not willing to actually do the work manually?

    What if companies both don't see a large return on investment, and at the same time can't reduce their AI spend?

  • polski-g 7 minutes ago
    AI isn't expensive.

    Opus is expensive. And almost always unnecessary.

  • Readerium 37 minutes ago
    For MSFT: Just download DeepSeek locally and use it.

    Or train your own power efficient stack.

  • upbeatlinux 21 minutes ago
    Is that why GitHub is always down?
  • hmaddipatla 22 minutes ago
    [dead]