this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 9 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Reminds me of companies getting their cloud computing bills.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 1 points 12 minutes ago

Yup. I've had the same thoughts. There are many who still think its insane to have your own equipment. Now there will be those who think its insane to do your own thinking.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 16 points 2 hours ago

a big source of AI token ‘chewing’ is people just converting PDFs to presentations

I haven't been this happy in over a year.

giggles

[–] Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

This is the most profitable consultant in the world, can't they just afford to run a local llm?

[–] dtrain@lemmy.world 7 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 21 points 4 hours ago

The funny thing is that even with this massive overspending, AI companies aren't profitable. They need these companies to spend 10x the amount per token, and 10x the number of tokens. Probably 10x the number of customers too.

Burning energy, draining water, spending massive cash so they can lose money on a product that doesn't even do its job. How the hell has the bubble not popped yet...

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 hours ago

Durr durdur

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 40 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
  • Replace workforce with AI because it's easy to be lazy with AI.
  • Remaining workforce uses AI to be lazy.
  • SurprisedPikachu.webp
[–] cheat700000007@lemmy.world 21 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Ew, webp. Chatgpt, convert that shit for me

[–] Mikrochip@feddit.org 15 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Hey, webp is awesome! Both lossless and lossy compression work great with it. Only thing lacking is software support

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 20 points 6 hours ago

Okay fine. ChatGPT, convert it back.

[–] Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

The response you're trying to save was a web page

[–] Manticore@lemmy.nz 3 points 6 hours ago

Yeah, that's the eww part :( I hate when I find great memes and I know exactly the friend to share them to.... and I can't DM them.

Especially if it's animated. Easy enough to change the extension on PC to a PNG without issue yet. But anything too large to screenshot, or with multiple frames? Many a SA DND have I let pass by

[–] CovfefeKills@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 hours ago

Tokenmaxing

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Waiting for hackers to break into companies and not do a ransomware attack. Just run some scripts which innocently do shit like turn PDFs into PowerPoints and chew through those tokens.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

"Turn this PDF into a powerpoint, and then summarize it with a haiku"

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 19 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

File changes its form,

Pages slide into their frames,

Slides ready to show.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 25 points 9 hours ago

When you tell the people to mash the easy button and then they do exactly what you wanted. They created the monster.

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 75 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

This is 100% the thesis I've been shopping personally... Many Boomers and Xers in executive positions had a "magical millennial" that they quietly kept as a secret "AI" to split/edit PDFs, set up an Airtable base, add columns to a google doc, etc. There was a tacit, silent agreement in this symbiotic relationship for the bulk of the last 20 years - you'll make sure I don't look completely incompetent in tech matters and I'll backchannel on your behalf to senior leaders and people who "matter" to help you advance.

Gen AI essentially allows the laziest input, gives a half competent output that "feels" fine and has the bonus of telling the boomer/Xer that they are actually amazingly capable, and could have done this themselves all along even, but they rightly delegated the task to their magical millennial, and now to the AI of choice.

So they fired all the magical millennials, because they knew too much about the before times. Now that they are fucked without a life raft, costs soar and they will cling for dear life because they will be exposed otherwise.

Edit: through a twist of fate, the iPad kids grew up technically incapable and relied on the magical millenials as well. They could only offer praise and loyalty really, or a boomer, Xer recruited them in and talked the MM up as a "wiz" to seek out. Anyway, now that the MM are gone, the Zoomers and gen Alpha kids only have one strength remaining, the old people have no idea what they are doing or how to quantify their success, outside of "use more AI". So the fragile balance remains for now, with a vulnerable, hollow center where the magical millennials used to live.

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 1 points 54 minutes ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago)

I'm surrounded by this shit, and it seems to come from all generations. My boss, who is my age, called me because her computer was frozen and she wanted me to fix it. "I was like, turn it off and on again, this is the first, most basic rule of troubleshooting." Meanwhile the boomer next to me is having me do shit like attach files to a fucking email.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

I don't know why you think it's a generational thing. There has always technical people that filled in the gaps that the more extroverted management types didn't care about. How do you think things worked when millennials were still in diapers?

What you're saying indicates you're one of those people that don't understand how many gaps other people are filling in for you. You're talking about splitting PDFs, who do you think designed the PDF format? Or the http protocol that you use to open that google doc?

Honestly the issue I see happening lately is that because iPads (and now AI) made things too easy for the young people they don't actually know how things work at the low level, not interested in learning it, and often react with "this is too complicated, make it easier for me!"

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

I said it was my own thesis, built from a decade plus in the trenches. If you read what I'd stated again, you'll see that the implication was not purely generational, but boomers/Xers with power who drove the change. You also over emphasis technicality here as I was purposefully discussing the more mundane, beginner to intermediate level daily tasks that the millenials were fulfilling here. The millennials in this group are typically in rightful awe of the old timers talents to build on the foundational level, and also envy their circumstance of walking into a more open sandbox and with more stakes to claim in the early days.

So basically, the above preceding doesn't really concern you unless you found your way to VP level or really to the csuite especially, and even then, always exceptions. That understood , I won't spend more time debating exceptions to the general rule, as I see it. I respect my elders, as long as they are decent people struggling to do better within these inherently broken systems.

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[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 22 points 10 hours ago

This post was a fuckin rollercoaster, well said

[–] Eternal192@anarchist.nexus 32 points 10 hours ago

Eat shit you greedy corporate assholes, i hope all of your companies are damaged beyond recovery, you useless fucking tools.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 36 points 11 hours ago (7 children)

Using an LLM to parse stuff is like using a rocket launcher to kill an ant.

You can accomplish the same thing using a million times fewer resources with a purpose-built program.

[–] Phantaloons@piefed.zip 10 points 6 hours ago

"ChatGPT, what time is it?"

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 8 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Will, that's what happens when employers tell employees that they should "use ai first", track their token use on a dashboard, and tell them they'll get fired if they are too low on the monthly ranking.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 11 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, my manager expressed satisfication with me being one of the people using my quota of tokens.

I have generated so much throwaway content that never gets used and only gets deleted to burn the tokens to avoid getting the "you aren't using AI enough" talk. The fact they can see my actual productive output and believe AI is involved shows how utterly disconnected the metric is from reality.

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