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Big Tech is cashing in on AI while the rest of corporate America sees no financial returns — report outlines how rising token costs threaten to squeeze corporate profit margins.
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eicker lemmy.world eicker@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-07-11
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272   Original
eicker lemmy.world eicker@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-07-11
#2 · Quote Reply

The AI revolution has achieved its first miracle: turning everyone else’s operating budget into Big Tech revenue. Corporate America gets an expensive chatbot, executives get a slide deck about ‘transformation,’ and Nvidia gets actual money. Turns out the only reliably productive AI workflow is billing the customer.

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Blibittyblah futurology.today Blibittyblah@futurology.today
Joined: 2026-10-25
#3 · Quote Reply

Same as it ever was.

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ddh lemmy.sdf.org DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org
Joined: 2023-06-10
#4 · Quote Reply

Did businesses think the AI companies were going to share any benefits lol

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Zephorah discuss.online Zephorah@discuss.online
Joined: 2025-07-01
#5 · Quote Reply

And the billionaires take in another billion or twenty.

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nehal3m lemmy.zip nehal3m@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-04-14
#6 · Quote Reply

No shit? Breed dependence, then squeeze. That has always been the playbook and business idiots keep falling for it.

Now instead of squeezing your workers you get fucked by Silicon Valley. If you bent over for that, all I can say is enjoy that 6 foot cock of consequences, assholes.

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🌸𝓯𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻🌸 sh.itjust.works Flower@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2026-04-29
#7 · Quote Reply

No shit? Breed dependence, then squeeze. That has always been the playbook and business idiots keep falling for it. Now instead of squeezing your workers you get fucked by Silicon Valley. If you bent over for that, all I can say is enjoy that 6 foot cock of consequences, assholes.

And longer term learn all about those companies as every secret ends up in AI to make a cheap agent run competitors that undercuts the original company.

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belochka lemmy.world belochka@lemmy.world
Joined: 2026-04-28
#8 · Quote Reply

The AI revolution has achieved its first miracle: turning everyone else’s operating budget into Big Tech revenue. Corporate America gets an expensive chatbot, executives get a slide deck about ‘transformation,’ and Nvidia gets actual money. Turns out the only reliably productive AI workflow is billing the customer.

No, making the customer think they've got the magic bullet doing all they need is a valid one too. The only problem is that it's repeating a job already done in areas where you need to do jobs not previously done, ideally. It's very useful for all wrong applications of tech where it was honestly not needed (things easily repeatable done by people who are honestly not that much smarter than haircutters). It's useless for the skeleton applications.

It's a very smart Ponzi scheme, one where much of the funds collected gets spent on maintaining real usefulness, at least visible one. Unlike most Ponzi schemes, it's able to achieve unimaginable scale due to that.

Like, say, plague has low survivability rates, and doesn't spread too easily, meaning that it's not very dangerous in the modern world. While a disease with very high survivability rates and easy spread has far bigger reach. Or a very slow incubation period with carriers being infectious long before detection.

OK, I suppose everyone likes Plague Inc.

IRL it's no good as something everyone uses, because current token costs are subsidized and because what's solvable with it for most people is what's been done many times before.

When things balance out, I'd expect token costs to be like 4 times what they are now. And people using these things to be mostly engineers.

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Almacca aussie.zone Almacca@aussie.zone
Joined: 2025-02-06
#9 · Quote Reply

Come on, bubble! Burst!

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jaybone lemmy.zip jaybone@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2025-02-08
#10 · Quote Reply

Tech companies? Maybe Nvidia. But all the companies buying their hardware (on loans) are they actually making any money?

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makeshift0546 lemmy.today makeshift0546@lemmy.today
Joined: 2026-05-11
#11 · Quote Reply

Giant traded companies desperate to not be left behind by share holders didn’t see gains. To anyone not being a moron and replace devs and using it to make them faster, it’s blatantly obvious there is an increase in net work.

We’re getting more done than ever and everyone on my team works a lot less. We’re only on $50 a month copilot and it’s a no brainer. The real question is where x and y cross. A $200/mo worth it? 400?

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canttakeitwithyou lemmy.zip canttakeitwithyou@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-10-24
#12 · Quote Reply

The AI revolution has achieved its first miracle: turning everyone else’s operating budget into Big Tech revenue. Corporate America gets an expensive chatbot, executives get a slide deck about ‘transformation,’ and Nvidia gets actual money. Turns out the only reliably productive AI workflow is billing the customer.

I think it's simpler than that. I think the AI snake oil sales people realized that corporate executives want to give themselves bonuses. And if you propose this magical technology, that's going to change everything, they can pretend for several years but it's actually going to change everything, and pay themselves a lot of money in the meantime.

It's greedy people relying on other greedy people so that some of them can get richer.

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deeprlyeh lemmus.org deeprlyeh@lemmus.org
Joined: 2026-08-14
#13 · Quote Reply

Did businesses think the AI companies were going to share any benefits lol

No capitalist company is going to share any benefit they produce.

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sylver_dragon lemmy.world sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-07
#14 · Quote Reply

AI isn't replacing people, its just making skilled workers somewhat faster and better at their jobs. I use AI pretty heavily in my work these days. I work in cybersecurity and if you go into the vendor room at any conference and throw a lawn dart in the air, it will almost certainly impale some vendor talking about their "AI Enabled" tool. Thing is though, some of those tools are actually really useful. When you are trying to dig the three malicious events out of tens of thousands of routine events which look very similar, an LLM trained on that sort of data can be really good at surfacing the bad stuff. Get yourself a few million log events per day, with attackers trying new stuff all the time, and you start to need something better than static algorithms and heuristics to find evil. Actually getting in front of attackers and stopping their attacks, before data walks out the door, gets even harder.

The problem arises when you have inexperienced folks using those tools and management is not willing to put the money into training and having more skilled workers to back the less trained workers. Part of that is just not knowing how things work and part of it is the AI lying very convincingly. Someone who knows systems reasonably well might look at one of those hallucinations and immediately call bullshit. Someone without that knowledge might assume the AI is right and kick off a pretty disastrous series of events. But this means that the company might just be spending more on workers plus AI tokens than they did on just workers.

And that's really the crux of the problem for businesses. AI isn't a magical worker replacement program. Its a tool to enhance workers. And it won't magically make marginal workers less marginal. It's like handing a wet behind the ears kid a chainsaw. He's not going to suddenly become Paul Bunyan and be the worlds most efficient lumberjack. He may not even be OK at the end of the day. On the other hand, get that chainsaw into the hands of an experienced lumberjack, and he might just be cause for better environmental regulations. The problem is, eventually every business will be using AI tools and any competitive advantage they offered will disappear. AI will just be a tool everyone uses and not using it will be like that lumberjack showing up to work without an axe and dressed in high heels.

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BarneyPiccolo lemmy.today BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
Joined: 2025-06-30
#15 · Quote Reply

AI is how those few Sociopathic Oligarchs plan on vacuuming up all the profits from every other company in America.

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BarneyPiccolo lemmy.today BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
Joined: 2025-06-30
#16 · Quote Reply

AI isn't replacing people, its just making skilled workers somewhat faster and better at their jobs. I use AI pretty heavily in my work these days. I work in cybersecurity and if you go into the vendor room at any conference and throw a lawn dart in the air, it will almost certainly impale some vendor talking about their "AI Enabled" tool. Thing is though, some of those tools are actually reall...

AI isn't replacing people, its just making skilled workers somewhat faster and better at their jobs.

The primary motivation of most CEOs for adopting AI is to replace as many salaries as possible. If it has other useful uses, that's great, but the primary corporate dream is to increase profits through job replacement.

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danielfm123 lemmy.zip danielfm123@lemmy.zip
Joined: 2026-07-12
#17 · Quote Reply

Economy doesn't work that way... If only AImsee proffit, it's hype.

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a_non_monotonic_function lemmy.world a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-10-22
#18 · Quote Reply

Did businesses think the AI companies were going to share any benefits lol

"They will make me rich for no reason!!!"

  • The CEO of business.
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Tollana1234567 lemmy.today Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
Joined: 2025-06-04
#19 · Quote Reply

widening by laying off people, they arnt exactly profitting at all from AI.

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Tollana1234567 lemmy.today Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
Joined: 2025-06-04
#20 · Quote Reply

Tech companies? Maybe Nvidia. But all the companies buying their hardware (on loans) are they actually making any money?

no, but convincing other rubes to give them more money.

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Tollana1234567 lemmy.today Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
Joined: 2025-06-04
#21 · Quote Reply

Did businesses think the AI companies were going to share any benefits lol

AI companies arnt even benefitting form thier own slop machines, only nvidia is probably benefiting from it for now.

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Shayeta feddit.org Shayeta@feddit.org
Joined: 2025-02-24
#22 · Quote Reply

AI isn't replacing people, its just making skilled workers somewhat faster and better at their jobs. The primary motivation of most CEOs for adopting AI is to replace as many salaries as possible. If it has other useful uses, that's great, but the primary corporate dream is to increase profits through job replacement.

Which isn't happening. AI can be run autonomously for simple tasks, but not the complex ones which are actually what costs the most. The quality of LLM output depends on the quality of input. GIGO holds.

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Sunflier lemmy.world Sunflier@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-03-27
#23 · Quote Reply

Which isn't happening. AI can be run autonomously for simple tasks, but not the complex ones which are actually what costs the most. The quality of LLM output depends on the quality of input. GIGO holds.

AI can be run autonomously for simple tasks, but not the complex ones which are actually what costs the most.

That's neither what its being sold as nor is it a reflection how tomorrow's capabilities are being advertised.

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Shayeta feddit.org Shayeta@feddit.org
Joined: 2025-02-24
#24 · Quote Reply

AI can be run autonomously for simple tasks, but not the complex ones which are actually what costs the most. That's neither what its being sold as nor is it a reflection how tomorrow's capabilities are being advertised.

And that is why the collapse of current hype is inevitable.

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Sunflier lemmy.world Sunflier@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-03-27
#25 · (edited) Quote Reply

And that is why the collapse of current hype is inevitable.

It will become hopium that you'll end up sell your kids to be raped by the Epstein class because you're so desperate for a bowl of hot soup to stave off starving to death.

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Shayeta feddit.org Shayeta@feddit.org
Joined: 2025-02-24
#26 · Quote Reply

It will become hopium that you'll end up sell your kids to be raped by the Epstein class because you're so desperate for a bowl of hot soup to stave off starving to death.

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

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Sunflier lemmy.world Sunflier@lemmy.world
Joined: 2025-03-27
#27 · Quote Reply

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

That people are only going to be more desperate.

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Shayeta feddit.org Shayeta@feddit.org
Joined: 2025-02-24
#28 · Quote Reply

That people are only going to be more desperate.

Of course.

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Logi lemmy.world logi@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-08
#29 · Quote Reply

Tech companies? Maybe Nvidia. But all the companies buying their hardware (on loans) are they actually making any money?

All that circular investment is being counted as revenue in some legs of the loop

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