
Dayum. If I was given unlimited budget for AI I would do the same. Everyone should have a set personal budget for AI expense and they can keep it if they don’t use AI.
If I’m going to get a $20,000 bonus at the end of the year if I don’t use any AI, I’m not going to use AI.
That’s a big problem with this tech… how do you price it? I think companies would purchase an allotment of tokens that can be used or banked by employees. Problem is they’d always be cutting the token budget.
Where I work I have to have a meeting and justify a $100 license for software. So I don’t know how this will work long term.
Tokenmaxing
Sorry bro, but ai budget should come from the salary

No, from yours
What a stupid take. Why should employee then even consider using it, when the cost for it would directly reduce their salary?
Personally I do it to clock more hours than I’ve actually done, why else?
Well that’s just working-hour fraud, you can do that even without using AI.
Is it? I’m spending my own money on 4 currently bottom tier AI subscriptions (fucking hell I’m not gonna pay 200€ a month for one sub) that I’m trying out and working on 3-4 projects in parallel. Lots of experimentation been done in my own time to get things working nicely too. I won’t say I deliver 3-4x as much work in the same time because obviously I don’t, I have to double check everything and with small things the AI is slower than I am… But even just 50% more work is 50% more money.
The alternative is going and saying “hey I want 50% more money per hour because I deliver 50% more work in the same timeframe now” and my employer telling me to pound sand because that puts me over what they charge for my work when they rent me out. Instead I bill them more and they bill their customers more and nobody needs to raise their rates.
This probably is a best case scenario for AI usage being a productivity boost, I’m not forced to use it (and often don’t), my employer/customer is okay with me billing extra hours IFF I’m getting things done in less time than reasonable estimates. Their customers still get the things done in the costs (hours) that they agreed to.
Well that is such a unique case. I’ve never heard any employer being okay with clocking hours that were not actually worked. And in your case it’s essentially just a raise with extra steps.
Exactly
But the employers want their employees to use it, (because of some unfounded promises about performance boosts). So I don’t really get your point.
He doesn’t have a point. I have him tagged as kremlin shill. He’s always out here licking russian boots with no logic besides spite for the west. Not worth engaging with in serious discussion.
Makes sense, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll tag them myself.
Employees will be motivated by doing less actual labour
relevant Pic though, as Ai has really boobiefied padme. like GOTDayum
that came after Uber told employees to use AI as much as possible and Uber’s CTO said the company had blown its entire AI budget in four months
Further evidence that most CEO’s and SLT’s are just confident, lucky, and born wealthy; not competent, smarter, or much better than average.
Also they are addicted to sycophancy. Now that they have a convincing yes man in their pockets they are uniquely vulnerable to AI psychosis.
Did they think everyone was gonna be creating return value based products for the company to make a fortune on?
Instead they making posters and having crazy convos.
It’s like someone has just discovered salt and every restaurant has it. Each thinks they are unique and gonna be the GOAT.
its not a presentation
its a “deck”
i fucking hate these people
I think the first time I heard “slide deck” was within the last few years. It was always a (PowerPoint) presentation. I heard “deck” on its own without context (something like “I’m making a deck”) within probably the last 6-12 months and had no idea at the time what that person was talking about.
It was always a (PowerPoint) presentation.
What did you call them before PowerPoint?
Either slideshow or presentation still. Presentation with like an overhead projector with someone changing sheets or manually drawn somewhere.
Slideshow would be an actual slideshow projector with slide film.
What a fuckin’ clown circus…
Wow, terrible news that companies that use ai are completely fcking themselves over. Whatever will we do to save the selfish prcks?
My work mandated we use the copilot. And the only thing I have found it really good at is converting or extracting information from a PDF to build me a spreadsheet. The native conversion programs in both Adobe and Excel suck so bad.
I have some suppliers who won’t send a spreadsheet or CSV nothing that is data, only a PDF.
It’s a stupid and computationally expensive way to do it but does solve a problem for me, a problem that doesn’t need to exist at all but has frustrated me for years.
Two birds, one stone. I can honestly say to my boss that I am using the copilot for work, and it’s a workaround for the insufficient reporting I get from our payroll provider in particular, but also some bulk invoices that are detailed and only come as PDF.
So yes I am in this group. I’ve only used it for file type conversion, and once to “write” a process document just so it would be formatted in Word, I went in and wrote over most of it.
And Accenture itself reportedly started requiring senior staff to start using AI or risk losing out on promotions.
Every time companies urge employees to use AI and then regret the cost. The fuck is wrong with people? Why are they pushing it so hard? Does Sam give them hand jobs if they use the most?
I don’t understand this need to pressure staff into using something and threatening punishment if not. Are they worried that their employees are not efficient enough? Pay them the token prices on top of their salary and see how stuff changes.
This is actually very common across businesses. My company actually has our bonuses tied to AI adoption, so we have dashboards showing people’s AI usage. Other major companies have done the same, which lead to the practice of “token maxxing” where people were using AI to make more AI calls to boost their numbers up.
Amazon did this and regretted it, canning their leaderboards It’s crazy to me that this is considered normal. Please use this fair dust product that will eventually replace you, kill the planet, and make some douchebag rich.
Tales as old as KPI.
The fuck is wrong with people?
That’s the corporate hive mind, all afraid of missing out of a great productivity tool. And they think that because media these days just copies what the richest people say and hype it up because the rich these days only speak to yes-men.
and then regret the cost
Reality doesn’t need to obey yes-men.
Fuck Accenture, they just abuse low level analysts to make profit.
AI is about to join the list of “stupid technologies that people should really wait and see before investing on”, which includes
- 3D TVs - complete dud
- Blockchain - useless for real world problems already solved by typical computing
- Metaverse - still one of the best jokes around
- Folding screen phones - overpriced junk
- Fully autonomous self driving cars - “Just around the corner” for the past 10 years
Fully autonomous self driving cars - “Just around the corner” for the past 10 years
It exists, but they realized that why should they do that, when they can make money by creating taxis without drivers.
There is no benefit for us, ordinary people.
They aren’t making any profit with self driving taxis, though.
Are you sure? I see Waymo driving around picking and dropping people off. I would imagine that charging more for the novelty and not having to pay the driver would actually generate a lot of profit.
Some of these turned out to be useless, some just haven’t been adequately delivered yet.
In 2040 folding phones and autonomous cars might be great, but blockchain will still be a solution in search of a problem.
Cold fusion. Green hydrogen. Hyper loop. Just off the top of my head.
Hyper Loop was an insane idea (in a bad way).
Motherfucker wanted to invent subway, but for cars, making cities even more dependent of cars.
Actually not entirely true.
He was proposing transportation method similar to how the communication tubes are. Where vacuum would be used to transport capsules with people.
He knew it was bunk, so initially just published that idea and let anyone do it. His actual goal was to kill California’s high speed rail, which he did.
Eventually he purchased Boring company and started building tunnel in Las Vegas and called that (as you called it, subway for cars) a hyper loop and pretend that it was the original idea.
hyperloop was very low air pressure subway tubes for high speed trains. Works for research tesring tracks impractical to infeasible for real world applications. But it apparently what killed high speed rail in california (because wait this will be better)
The cars in tubes thing was a seperate stupid idea.
Average massively shitty car CEO idea
I don’t know that he really wanted to fully execute on Hyperloop so much as build hype (and Tesla stock price) around the idea while sabotaging funding for California’s high speed rail project. But yes, end goal to keep people buying his cars.
Cold fusion is a scam, not a bad idea. There is no scientific basis for that. Is as bad as “infinite energy engine”.
All of the things I mentioned are scams lol
Green hydrogen is water electrolysis with solar power, not scam, it works, it is just a question of making it economically viable. Hyperloop is just stupid, but within the realm of possible. Cold fusion is the only scam here.
The scam isn’t always “fake tech” so much as “distracting from better alternatives for monetary reasons”. Even if hyperloop worked perfectly, they’re not going to build it, because not building high speed rail was always the point.
Your definition of “scam” is not what other human being use. Causes unnecessary back and forth.
Oh, put a sock on it.
All of these have one thing in common. They are viable technologies for certain use cases but not widespread technologies for everyone and everything.
Folding Phones Sales Continue To Increase since 2019, showing people seem to like them

This could also be explained by the entire rest of the market being different flavors of the exact same thing. A little over a decade ago, we actually had choices in what type of phone we wanted. Now, if you want anything other than an identical slab, foldables are your only choice.
I wish someone would make another widescreen slider already. Droid 2 was the shit at the time.
Disco Stu says disco record sales have trended upwards for the entire decade of 1970’s. If this trend continues… eyyyyyyyyy!
Two time buyer, can confirm. They’re legitimately useful and durable enough for me.
I don’t think they are for me but I honestly would not include them in that list above. First of all, there is no investment bubble around them and secondly some people seem to like them and are ready to pay for them. They also do have legitimate benefits (but also downsides)
Yeah I didn’t dislike the 3d monitors/tvs they just had too many caveats at the time and VR kind of ate its lunch.
3D stuff has the fundamental issue that VR and 3D views are just incredibly straining on the human user. Folding phones have no such issue and their durability is also good enough to be competitive (yet clearly worse than regular smart phones). They are really not comparable to 3D monitors and VR.
I think the strain is really dependent on the person as it never really bothered me, it definitely is a problem for some people though. Either way I don’t think it belongs in the same category as blockchain bullshit
It is straining for everyone but yes, some can handle the strain better than others. It just takes so much more mental energy to handle. Most can’t handle it well though, which is why those technologies never manage to break out of their niche.
I do agree however that it is quite different from NFT and other scams. It is a really fascinating technology with real use cases but just some foundational issues that prevent it from leaving their niche.
If it lasts 5 years, maybe its durable enough.
Two time buyer as in you liked it so much and bought another, or two time buyer as in the first is already inoperative and got another?
My fold4 lasted 3 years, and still works. I’ll concede it was only able to unfold to about 85% open at the end when I decided to upgrade. I was happy to upgrade to the fold 7 which has a redesigned hinge and better dust protection. I acknowledged the risk of mechanical failure as a possibility compared to a slab phone and after using it for years I decided I was still very impressed with the flexibility of having a tablet in my pocket. The fact that my 7th generation is significantly thinner and has a 200MP camera compared to the 4th is what sealed the deal.
It’s not perfect for everyone, but I wouldn’t go back to using a slab, there’s too much functionality I’d be pissed giving up.
Granted, I tend to upgrade my phone every 2 years or so anyway.
I find only 3 years of durability to be absurd 0_0
I find keeping a phone longer than three years absurd, guess we like different things!
Not the same guy. But I’ve been using foldables since 2019 as my primary phone. Samsung fold 1 -> 3 -> 5. No case, no protectors, keys with phone in same pocket. Never had an issue.
I like the one that folds like a GBA SP.
Not that I’m gonna buy one based on that.
But if I’m choosing between two identical models but one folds (and I guess it isn’t that much more expensive), I’d go for the folding one.
Except, of course, for the fact that the next phone I buy will be Commodore’s Callback.I had the Fold 2 and Fold 4, both broke so I just went back to a Pixel 🤷
Metaverse - still one of the best jokes around
This one I slightly disagree with. I got my headset on a black friday and it was super cheap, but VR documentaries are friggin’ amazing and I hope museums will invest heavily in it in the coming years.
Fully autonomous self driving cars - “Just around the corner” for the past 10 years
Definitely. Makes me feel good for people who make their living driving trucks.
The metaverse isn’t VR in general, it was meant to be a virtual space in VR where users could be advertised to and buy/rent things and space like in a physical city.
It failed because those were the intended starting points, and it didn’t solve any problem other than a shitty attempt at a “I want to live in a ready player one world” and didn’t have any compelling reasons to actually use it, let alone use it and pay ridiculous amounts to do interesting things there. They always just wanted to be the middlemen, offering space for others to pay for and do something interesting in. The most interesting thing they came up with is having a meeting with avatars instead of faces on a screen (and most people don’t even want to turn on their video and just do a voice conversation instead).
Plus Second Life already tried the same idea and failed, and did so without requiring several hundred dollars of specialized equipment per user like the Metaverse did.
Though they did have the advantage of their name not being poison. When fb bought oculus, I stopped considering them an option for VR setups.
Until someone come up with things like sword art online, they gonna flop lmao
Don’t forget NFTs… though I guess that can fall under blockchain.
It’s just the same as crypto
Literally, even. NFTs exist on crypto blockchains themselves.
I know. I’m a BCH developer.
Cool, welcome to lemmy, where it’s assumed that you aren’t the only person reading your replies and that every answer may be tailored to a broader audience. I hope you someday find as much experience with it as you have BCH.
I’m also the developer of Mbin (Lemmy alternative) btw.
Thanks for the warning.
yeah but NFTs were so stupid that they deserve their own dishonorable mention here.
NFTs are so fucking stupid the satirical yearly award for this shit should probably be the NonFungible Trophy cus it’s a literal fucking physical trophy.
3D TVs - complete dud
The real issue with 3D TVs had nothing to do with the tech, but 100% to do with lazy implementation on the media side. Everyone was always trying to make things pop out of the screen, which was the complete wrong approach. Nevermind the fact that companies got so lazy to the point of just filming in 2D and then “adding” 3D in post.
No one wanted to put in the effort to do it right (aside from James Cameron). So no wonder no one liked it.
I watch a lot of YouTube about everything nerdy and celebratory to every detail and facet about the global apocalypse. Yesterday for the first time in months, a novel idea got through to me… dude was talking about the overblown reactionary movement to which I initially ate my own vomit… yes, I consume this drug, but yes, I am cognisant it’s really bad, so don’t tell me it’s all okay… Something along lines of “everyone thinks it’s like the industrial revolution. It’s not. It’s like the Internet or mobile devices. We just forget how big a change those were now that they’re normative, so it sounds psychotic to compare AI to such “small” shifts in society like the Internet or mobile”… and I felt a fuck ton better. Copium or not, it’s nice to hear a grounded take (he backed it up), and neither a sycophant or chicken little diatribe that feel respectively like sociopaths with heads in the ground or click bait unsubstantiated drama.
Not undermining what AI is doing to people, society, and the ecology. But now that I type that, thinking what to follow, anyone remember Mary Poppins? How normal it was for little kids covered in soot missing fingers at the dawn of the industrial revolution. We just need regulation which is the actual fundamental shift problem, as demand for political action is no longer democratized now that the Citizens have United.
Am I a douche? Lying to myself?
LLMs as a technology are incredibly powerful tools that have so many useful applications. The issue is trying to turn them into this all powerful omnitool that could do everything, and then shoving that product up everyone’s ass at every turn.
There was always bound to be a correction to this bubble, because the current model is unsustainable. You can only keep making unreasonable moves for so long before everything starts to crumble and your forced to scale back.
Yeah AGI is a mistake. Maybe someday, but what we need know is token efficient LLMs that are designed for for more specific tasks.
There’s a lot of data that it could be helpful for analyzing, but if there’s customer data in there that you can’t share with a third party? Can’t use any of these tools. An appliance in your company’s server room with a bunch of GPUs that’s optimized for data analysis, that’s something I’d be interested in. But with the price of GPUs right now, that’s unlikely to happen.
So the bubble needs to burst before LLMs are truly useful.
Leadership are mostly idiots. They don’t know how work gets done. They think like “wow it produced so many lines of code!” and don’t know that’s not a useful metric.
My job had Microsoft do a four hour copilot demo for the entire team last week. (Surely an immense expense. They won’t pay for most people to be full time with benefits). The guy used copilot to make a regex to parse html. A little surprised zalgo didn’t show up.
CEOs them to make power points using the already pre built company presentation template then talk about how they couldn’t have made it without AI like that’s supposed to show how useful AI is and not how incompetent they are
Yeh but the people trained ‘number’ widget went up on their numbers dashboard. Good reason for another self awarded bonus!
I’ll one up you.
Google’s “principal evangelist” for Gemini did a 2hr presentation for almost 1,000 people at my company on Google Meet a few weeks ago.
40 mins late due to nobody knowing how to get more than 500 people in a meet.
He then spent 90 minutes showing everyone how to do shit that literally everyone knows how to do with AI nowadays; touch up old photos of your grandparents, make shitty marketing mascots and logos, etc…
Here’s an image I took during the presentation. For a laugh, look at the background text:

A C-Suite exec got impatient and asked when we were going to cover how to use agentic tools and he said “oh I’ve got a little section at the end for that.” Ffs
Literally nothing useful happened during this meeting and nearly 1,000 employees were idle for no reason. A complete and utter waste of fucking time. Gemini dude didn’t even bother to consider what use cases we might be looking into, he just did a boilerplate ELI5 of AI that would have been outdated in like 2022.
Absolutely insane.
lol why is “animals” in quotes?
Never work with children or animals (or do a live demo)
ROFL. Thanks for the screencap, that’s priceless.
Lastly, poor Buc-ee the beaver deserves better.
This is the most profitable consultant in the world, can’t they just afford to run a local llm?
I heard about a company that was looking at purchasing machines to run local llms for their developers to use.
If more companies do this, rather than using the massive ai data centers being built…. the RAMpocolypse will get way worse.
That is the part that pains me to admit - running local LLMs is not a solution to the RAMpocalypse. In that case we’d just have more GPUs and RAM idling for ~90% of the time in someones basement, without being shared. As bad as it sounds, having data centers for AI stuff is actually the more ecological solution. I can’t believe I said that. Excuse me, I have to take a shower now *shudder*
So you say I have to destroy the AI thing?



























