Someone had to say it first - it’s no secret. A bit surprising that MS is early here.

I don't feel like the companies are concerned about it costing more right now as much as they are betting that it will be cheaper in the long run. The cost of labor isn't unlikely to decrease drastically while the technology is likely to become cheaper.

While I would love to believe Microsoft is being burned by spending on AI, I think they don't mind spending more now so long as they can trade the cost labor for the costs of technology and maintain similar productivity.

Feels like they hope this will be to white collar jobs what Uber was for taxi drivers. Current profitability isn't really the goal as much as being able to reproduce similar outputs.

Hahahahahhhahahahahaaha

g a s p

HhahahhahahahbahahhHahahahahahah

At which point this is about billionaires trying to escape accountability again. Regarding a work force, again.

I wonder if anyone's figured out a way to automate burning corporate money through the constant use of AI. Like a bot that just chain prompts the same five questions on loop, or something.

At least they're being transparent about it. AI agent workflows can burn through far more tokens if they are used every day, so, normally, employees are still more affordable.

Sure, if they are using Copilot. Copilot is fucking garbage.

If they made a model that was half as good as Claude or Kimi or Qwen, they wouldn't be in this mess.

Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying for a while. Without VC money to subsidize it, AI is fucking expensive. Literally the only reason anyone is paying for it is because it’s so cheap it’s barely worth it. Once the price goes up 10x, nobody’s gonna be interested.

But I think there's an important psychological dimension to this: bosses are especially easy to trick with AI when they're being asked to believe that they can use AI to fire workers who are in a position to tell them to fuck off.

… What a relief it would be to fire everyone who is professionally required to tell you to fuck off when you want them to do stupid and/or dangerous things …

This also explains why media bosses are so anxious to fire screenwriters and actors and replace them with AI. … The difference is that the writers will call you a clueless fucking suit and demand that you go back to your spreadsheets and stop bothering them while they're trying to make a movie, whereas the chatbot will cheerfully shit out a (terrible) script to spec. The fact that the script will suck is less important than the fact that swapping writers for LLMs will let studio bosses escape ego-shattering conflicts with empowered workers who actually know how to do things.

It also explains why bosses are so anxious to replace programmers with chatbots. … Tech companies had business-wide engineering meetings where techies were allowed to tell their bosses that they thought their technical and business strategies were stupid.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/20/i-would-prefer-not-to/

They've invested so much money and infrastructure into AI that it's impossible not to push it, even if it is more expensive with worse results. They're too deep in the rabbit hole now and they know it. Everyone was betting on the next step of AGI and it turns out the step is a mountain that they may never scale. And of course, when the bubble pops, the executives will be fine and we'll be left to foot the bill.

"AI - pay more for more incompetence"

Nuh uh, it targets babies and refugee tents like no one's business! And that's priceless.

I've never seen gas prices so high and with sticking power:

$6.60 is the highest I'm seeing in the Seattle area for regular. Diesel and premium are basically $7.00 and beyond. The orange turd has basically fucked up the thing that keeps people buying stuff. So anyway, I wonder how AI is going to extract more from us for the rich to get richer.

lol, lmao

doh

Hahahaha

inflation raises all boats. cheaper alternatives get sunk soon enough