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.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
625 points (99.5% liked)
Technology
85720 readers
4262 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Well, if your KPI is how much you use an LLM like in some reports - this is an easy way to get those good indicators. Also, LLMs are super easy to use to parse things, whereas many special programs like IDK grep isn't exactly user friendly. Not to mention not finding patterns really. Though here I'm thinking things like looking at various logs on computers.
Maybe we could at least nudge the LLMs in the direction of suggesting appropriate tools and giving hints how to actually do that when applicable instead of blindly brute forcing every task. Of course that does not solve the issue of stupid corporate incentives, but I feel like by now most companies have realized that burning as much money as possible is not a good goal.
load more comments
(7 replies)
These stupid companies are getting everything they deserve and I'm loving it.
Nah. The bailouts will only be two or three tomes what they squander.
Indeed, they won't pay for these mistakes, we will.
"They're too big to fail" etc., with another round of bailouts for our poor, beleaguered corporations.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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
Folding Phones Sales Continue To Increase since 2019, showing people seem to like them
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)
load more comments
(4 replies)
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?
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Don't forget NFTs... though I guess that can fall under blockchain.
yeah but NFTs were so stupid that they deserve their own dishonorable mention here.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(25 replies)
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 product that will eventually replace you, kill the planet, and make some douchebag rich.
Edit: mobile typos
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The problem seems to be that it takes competent employees to get anything useful out of an LLM in the first place. However, it is these very employees whom the greedy CEOs want to replace. So the result is that an incredible amount of money is being spent on absolutely nothing.
The logical conclusion, then, should be that it would make more sense to replace these useless CEOs with AI. Since they’re just making idiotic decisions for a lot of money anyway, there could be lots of savings.
Unfortunately, however, that will never happen, because contrary to all that talk of KPIs and such, what really matters in the upper echelons of management is never efficiency, but rather ruthlessness and brown-nosing.
I recently learned of a term "reverse centaur" and found the ideas in that article were very entertaining as a way to explain why CEOs are obsessed with LLMs. The author of the book being interviewed has a few hot takes that I think are pretty relevant here too. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/how-to-burst-the-ai-bubble-strike-at-its-roots/
Indeed!
“The bubble doesn’t want cheap useful things,” Doctorow said. “It wants expensive ‘disruptive’ things: big foundational models that lose billions of dollars every year. When the AI investment mania halts, most of the models are going to disappear, because it just won’t be economical to keep the data centers running. The collapse of the AI bubble is going to be ugly. Seven AI companies currently account for more than a third of the stock market, and they endlessly pass around the same $100 billion IOU. AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more.”
I think that pretty much sums it up.
Doctorow is the Cassandra of our time.
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.
This dumb bubble can't pop soon enough and wipe away most of the US economy while doing so.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Gonna bump my gaming rig to 64GB as soon as these asshats get what we've all known was always coming to them
You know, if we were taught to use something like LaTeX, this wouldn't be an issue because of BEAMER
That wouldn't fix the issue though. The problem seems to be that most people only put out a PDF file when sharing slides, and never end up sharing the source file (the .pptx or .tex file).
This is likely because PDF became the "file that everyone can open", just in their web browser. It's the next best thing to a web page for non-techie consumption. Yes, there's no reason people can't open pptx in most cases, but I bet various endpoint protection and just not understanding how to even pick the right program to open the file steps in.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
Consulting giant Accenture is trying to figure out how to stop non-technical workers from blowing through companies’ AI token budget on trivial tasks like converting PDFs to presentation slides
Sounds the people they hired to do the shit work don't actually want to do that type of work. I, for one, am shocked. Shocked I tell you!
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.