https://www.axios.com/2026/04/26/ai-cost-human-workers Uber's chief technology officer already blew through his full 2026 AI budget due to token costs, according to The Information.
Lol. Lmao even
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
520 points (99.6% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
39950 readers
3652 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Does AI cost more than humans primarily because of greed (i.e the AI companies demand a high profit margin now) or because of energy costs (i.e AI is so wasteful with energy, so polluting, that it costs more than human workers)
Given the ai companies are running at al loss, it’s fair to assume which if these is likely
It's both.
Precisely. The question then is, which one is the main driver? I think it does fall on energy cost/the ridiculous scale of infrastructure they've decided is required to sustain AI companies.
Conclusion (for a luddite) is that One could cripple AI companies if simply prevented them from finishing their data centre every time. Goodness, it's like a RTS strategy game where you have to build a monument to win the game.
If the other one is the main driver of this, purely an inflated profit margin, it indicates that AI is already collapsing and they're desperately trying to scrape more venture capital off the back of the businesses that haven't clued-in the how ineffective AI usually is.
This is a common myth, inference is not typically run at a loss, despite claims. It’s only a loss if you include staff and ongoing training costs. They could lock in their models now and be profitable if they wanted to.
Edit: I see the comment above has changed (or I misread initially) to say the companies are running at a loss rather than inference running at a loss. Yes, that’s extremely true. Now my comment doesn’t make any sense and is irrelevant so feel free to ignore my pedantry.
Yes, and let’s also not count all the investments in infrastructure because you know… like training and staff it’s not a real cost that’s essential to the business.
Anyways, you wouldn’t happened to have heard that from Anthropocene or OpenAI?
Somehow we don’t have any actual indisputable numbers (I wonder why) but it is actually quite controversial and some of those who have done deep research on the subject are saying inference IS run at a loss and it might not get profitable ever.
https://www.ft.com/content/fce77ba4-6231-4920-9e99-693a6c38e7d5?syn-25a6b1a6=1
We do have numbers from comparably sized Chinese models.
Yes, every AI company is bleeding money, they’re not healthy in any way. But inference by itself is profitable, based on everything that we know.
Inference + amortizing the training costs is NOT profitable, which is what most people are talking about.
This is easily fixed by not releasing a slightly different version every month.
"Inference is not typically run at a loss"
Bro thats called cherry picking
Businesses work on cash in cash out
Right now AI companies make way less cash than they spend overall when you dont include investments
Furthermore, most people use a free version of AI and would stop using it if it cost them anything
Explain how to pivot to profit when the investments dry up, were all waiting
Do companies tend to use the free version too?
Do rhetorical questions add to the conversation?
I’m not saying they’re healthy, I’m saying that inference is the one profitable part of their business.
They’re all going to die because training costs dwarf the inference, and training doesn’t generate ANY revenue.
You know that wouldn't happen. Which AI company wants to be the one that says, "we're happy with where the model is at right now" and stops throwing cash into the boiler of the investor hype train and let their competitors exceed them in real or imagined metrics? Clearly firms like Anthropic have to rely on circus marketing tricks like "This model is too dangerous for the general public to see! Ooooh scary! Coming Soon!", and they can't do that without continuous training.
For you and I, the offline models aren't too bad for getting little side projects started, but for major AI firms, the ongoing training cost for the next model and the one after that has become ingrained into the operating model.
I’m aware! I’m not saying they are healthy in any way. I’m just correcting that specific misinformation, because truth is important.
These companies are fucked if they keep operating the way they currently are, and I strongly suspect it’s all going to pop like the dotcom bubble, but worse.
They just say a number. If nobody pays, it's too high. If everyone pays, it's too low. Aim is for i) highest market share, ii) max ARR, and iii) highest margin.
They're selling the idea that a machine costs less than a human. They're Walmart, humans are mom-and-pop shops. Once the competitors are gone, they charge whatever they want (you pay or you close out). Fuck them.
Costs. AI companies have been running at a big loss using investment money trying to scale quickly and conquer the market. That always comes at an end and something closer to the real costs has to be paid.
The AI companies bet on efficiencies occurring that have not materialized.