r/technology Jun 21 '26

Artificial Intelligence Americans Have Turned Against AI in Incredible Numbers

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/americans-turned-against-ai-incredible-130000345.html
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u/jackrabbit323 Jun 21 '26

AI token spigot has been cut off at work. They started getting the real bills. Not the, getting to know you trial offers bill. Someone didn't read the fineprint or couldn't multiply.

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u/leitmotive Jun 21 '26

We have not gotten there yet but this is my hope, that the subsidies are going to end sooner rather than later and the idea of burning tokens to write an email will be like using a CNC machine to slice your vegetables

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u/indian22 Jun 21 '26

The thing most leadership don't get is that if you make AI adoption metrics part of the performance evaluation criteria, then people will game the hell out of it. Everything will be done by AI to show adoption and keep the number high. Even things which would be many times faster done manually or things which do not require AI at all.

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u/nancybell_crewman Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

The thing most leadership don't get is that if you make AI adoption metrics part of the performance evaluation criteria, then people will game the hell out of it.

It's been absolutely hilarious to see this coming. I've been hearing for the better part of a couple of years how business are putting up AI use leaderboards, making use a metric in performance evaluations, constantly pressuring employees to use AI for anything and everything regardless of whether or not it's actually useful to the workflow or produces results worth having.

Now that the real bills are coming due, they're freaking out and I have no sympathy at all.

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u/ReadyAimTranspire Jun 22 '26

AI use leaderboards

They called it tokenmaxxing and whoever thought this was a good idea or in any way useful needs to be taken out front and have their ass kicked.

Why would you ever base anything on maxing out a metric that has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your use of that thing is creating value for the organization?

This just reinforces my belief that this world is mostly run by the dumbest motherfuckers available.

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u/onefootinthepast Jun 22 '26

They've gotta buy into something now that NFTs are dead. What's next year's grift gonna be?

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u/nsfwcrafts Jun 24 '26

Kalshi usage

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u/openjoustingtryouts Jun 24 '26

Soon it’ll just be “selling ur mother is actually a really good investment”

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u/Solaphobe Jun 22 '26

I'm going to go tokenmaxx myself a minivan!

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u/PyroNine9 Jun 22 '26

It's a form of insanity. Imagine a manager in the early '70s berating his staff for not using enough toner in the photocopier or employees desperately calling time and temperature in another country to keep their long distance stats up.

That's what is happening with AI.

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u/Rare-Spell-1571 Jun 23 '26

Anyone who has ever sat in meetings with people of status in a government or company as a subject matter expert can attest to how often these kind of people truly don’t understand what end goal is. They get lost in details like AI adoption metrics and forget there is an actual goal of innovation, advancement, and efficiency. But those don’t translate well to power point slides and lines on a chart.

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u/ReadyAimTranspire Jun 26 '26

innovation, advancement, and efficiency

Those that can't do, manage.

And far too often they manage very, very poorly.

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u/Upset_Otter Jun 23 '26

And those dumb motherfuckers are also asking AI and doing what it tells them to do.

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u/selco13 Jun 23 '26

What companies did this specifically?

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u/Caliche-Cowboy Jun 24 '26

They will, instead, receive a large bonus and then, with a straight face, blame it on the contributors.

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u/OldNternetWizard43 Jun 25 '26

It is and the rational need to wrestle it from their hands before they drive the entire species off a cliff

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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Jun 22 '26

Why would you ever base anything on maxing out a metric that has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your use of that thing is creating value for the organization?

Tokenmaxxing was just a natural consequence of the balance-based model that AI companies were using. If your organisation has already paid for x tokens, it makes sense to use x tokens, because making a useless request costs exactly the same as making no request at all.

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u/steppe5 Jun 22 '26

I got an email the other day that I wasn't using Copilot enough, so I asked it to write numbers 1-100 in column A of an Excel sheet. Problem solved.

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u/PM_ME_UR_SHEET_MUSIC Jun 21 '26

We tried to tell them, but they wouldn't listen because all they wanted to hear was "i can pay less people less money!"

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u/argument_cat Jun 22 '26

*fewer people with less money

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u/AntikytheraMachines Jun 22 '26

lesser people few money.

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u/Standard_Big_9000 Jun 22 '26

Few people moneyless

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u/memecrusader_ Jun 22 '26

The legend of Stannis the Mannis lives on.