Sources and leaks from Amazon, Adobe, Atlassian, Citi, and more show what is really happening with AI right now: companies are trying to reign in AI use as costs spiral out of control.
https://www.404media.co/companies-are-throttling-employees-ai-use-because-its-too-expensive/
@404mediaco This whole thing is one large mass-psychosis...
Companies are reinventing underpaid junior devs again, because AI is just shit at everything for the steep price they're asking for it... It's crazy.
@404mediaco
"reign in" - rein in
@404mediaco as my mind struggles to understand why any profit-driven company would actively mandate that employees spend as much money as possible on a service provided by an outside vendor, and rank employees by how much expense they incur, only one explanation makes sense to me: payola. if the managers who set these perverse incentives weren't being personally rewarded financially in some way that is not linked to their company's profits, then the only explanation left really is irrational AI psychosis. I haven't seen any investigation of bribery as a possible explanation; maybe 404 media can look into it.
@404mediaco I don't get it... How are they using AI?? My boss bought me individual subscription to Claude (the Pro plan, not the Max), which is rather cheap, my record is using no more than 78% of my weekly token quota - yet my boss is amazed by the amount of work I've managed to do since with the help of the AI. At least for us, the price of the subscription has paid for itself several times over already. We wouldn't be able to do that much work if we had hired a live programmer to work with me - and his salary would have been 10 times the cost of the subscription. Not to mention that he would have become annoyed with me and left on the second month.
Jul 2, 2026, 4:02 PM@404mediaco time to eat what they've cooked
