NEW: Amazon has reportedly scrapped its internal AI leaderboard as costs soared, with a senior executive telling staff: “don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI.”

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) May 28, 2026

No one is being cut for AI expansion.

They're being cut because companies figured out that only about 25% of the people do the work. AI is a great excuse not to look heartless.

Instead of AI, how about dumping DEI and hiring intelligent people?

AI companies are already signaling an end to free/cheap AI. They will need to get the zillions they invested back. How will they do this? By squeezing other corporations who put all their eggs in the AI basket without thinking of backup plans. The ones who fired their employees "for AI" will also suffer a lot.

I don't blame Altman. Tech-Bro just wants his investment back. Seems logical to me. He plans to supply AI just like we get water or electricity - on a metered pipeline.

The result of when this happens is a backlash of some sort where companies feel AI is too expensive for what they do and begin to hire people who at that point are much cheaper.

'People will buy intelligence from us on a meter': ChatGPT's CEO, Sam Altman, has critics worried with his AI vision
https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision

Quote:

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During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI's Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

The comment immediately sparked debate online, not just because of what it says about AI's future, but because of what it suggests about who may eventually control it.

Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply "plug into" it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.

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infinity ag said:

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AI companies are already signaling an end to free/cheap AI. They will need to get the zillions they invested back. How will they do this? By squeezing other corporations who put all their eggs in the AI basket without thinking of backup plans. The ones who fired their employees "for AI" will also suffer a lot.

I don't blame Altman. Tech-Bro just wants his investment back. Seems logical to me. He plans to supply AI just like we get water or electricity - on a metered pipeline.

The result of when this happens is a backlash of some sort where companies feel AI is too expensive for what they do and begin to hire people who at that point are much cheaper.

'People will buy intelligence from us on a meter': ChatGPT's CEO, Sam Altman, has critics worried with his AI vision
https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision

Quote:

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During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI's Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

The comment immediately sparked debate online, not just because of what it says about AI's future, but because of what it suggests about who may eventually control it.

Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply "plug into" it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.

---

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Seeing as how Healthcare, electric, water, food, internet and housing seem to be a "natural human right" I dont see how they can charge for using it. This should be the democrats platform going forward.

Scruffy said:

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infinity ag said:

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AI companies are already signaling an end to free/cheap AI. They will need to get the zillions they invested back. How will they do this? By squeezing other corporations who put all their eggs in the AI basket without thinking of backup plans. The ones who fired their employees "for AI" will also suffer a lot.

I don't blame Altman. Tech-Bro just wants his investment back. Seems logical to me. He plans to supply AI just like we get water or electricity - on a metered pipeline.

The result of when this happens is a backlash of some sort where companies feel AI is too expensive for what they do and begin to hire people who at that point are much cheaper.

'People will buy intelligence from us on a meter': ChatGPT's CEO, Sam Altman, has critics worried with his AI vision
https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision

Quote:

---

During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI's Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

The comment immediately sparked debate online, not just because of what it says about AI's future, but because of what it suggests about who may eventually control it.

Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply "plug into" it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.

---

---

Seeing as how Healthcare, electric, water, food, internet and housing seem to be a "natural human right" I dont see how they can charge for using it. This should be the democrats platform going forward.

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Newsom as President may write an Exec Order to make AI a human right. Good point.

Logos Stick said:

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javajaws said:

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The problem with today's AI - is that it isn't really AI. Its brute force computing. To get this type of "AI" smarter...means inherently raising the cost with more compute power. There are only so many tricks you can do to make this type of AI better without using more compute power. Costs will only really come down when we achieve AGI.

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But like hph6203 noted, there is a crap ton of compute power available that's not being used. LLMs can run on regular CPUs. There is growing talk and development around using private/spare computer resources (like users' idle laptops, desktops, and GPUs) for LLM inference and even training.

That would be significantly cheaper than building and operating new centralized data centers, even after you pay home users for their electricity, hardware depreciation, and a profit (cash or perhaps tokens).

That would also solve the NIMBY DC issue.

The limitation will be electrons. We are shifting from a "compute hardware" problem to an "energy infrastructure" problem.

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Crowd sourcing compute is the next, plausible phase IMO. Data Centers in space is pie in the sky nonsense until it's not.

Why not tap into all of the existing compute just sitting in people's homes. I have my old PC tower sitting in the corner unplugged. Instead of upgrading the components, I replaced it because I was too lazy to crack the case and swap stuff out. But I kept it just in case a secondary use case could be leveraged even though the GPU is now obsolete compared to today's chips. If AI models continue to optimize and are able to leverage older hardware, then that PC may become useful again for some home AI task that hasn't been dreamed up yet.

Scruffy said:

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infinity ag said:

---

AI companies are already signaling an end to free/cheap AI. They will need to get the zillions they invested back. How will they do this? By squeezing other corporations who put all their eggs in the AI basket without thinking of backup plans. The ones who fired their employees "for AI" will also suffer a lot.

I don't blame Altman. Tech-Bro just wants his investment back. Seems logical to me. He plans to supply AI just like we get water or electricity - on a metered pipeline.

The result of when this happens is a backlash of some sort where companies feel AI is too expensive for what they do and begin to hire people who at that point are much cheaper.

'People will buy intelligence from us on a meter': ChatGPT's CEO, Sam Altman, has critics worried with his AI vision
https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision

Quote:

---

During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI's Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

The comment immediately sparked debate online, not just because of what it says about AI's future, but because of what it suggests about who may eventually control it.

Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply "plug into" it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.

---

---

Seeing as how Healthcare, electric, water, food, internet and housing seem to be a "natural human right" I dont see how they can charge for using it. This should be the democrats platform going forward.

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Huh? All of these "natural human rights" cost money now. Nothing is free.

You will pay for AI just like you pay for everything else unless you are the welfare class.

I'm only beginning to learn a little about how AI works at a coding level (or any level really) so don't jump on me for these comments. But, I was selling multi-users computers (from 1 to 100+ desktops) in the early 80s. All to businesses that had never owned any kind of computer.

This entire discussion, with a few changes in terms, is very similar to discussions in the late 70s to early 80s when microprocessor CPUs where changing (inventing) the modern dependence on computers.

So many in the upper level of corporate management had to have a computer, but had no real plan or thought of what to do with them. It all worked out, and some people got really rich. Among lots of upper management (and small business owners) "computer" was a thing unto itself, somewhat disjointed from the improvements/efficiencies they were supposed to bring.

I suspect the rollout of AI will be similar.

cecil77 said:

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I'm only beginning to learn a little about how AI works at a coding level (or any level really) so don't jump on me for these comments. But, I was selling multi-users computers (from 1 to 100+ desktops) in the early 80s. All to businesses that had never owned any kind of computer.

This entire discussion, with a few changes in terms, is very similar to discussions in the late 70s to early 80s when microprocessor CPUs where changing (inventing) the modern dependence on computers.

So many in the upper level of corporate management had to have a computer, but had no real plan or thought of what to do with them. It all worked out, and some people got really rich. Among lots of upper management (and small business owners) "computer" was a thing unto itself, somewhat disjointed from the improvements/efficiencies they were supposed to bring.

I suspect the rollout of AI will be similar.

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It already has been this way. See this thread: https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3608705

Multiple Big Tech execs have had to rein in their own organizations because there was no plan for it other than "everyone needs to use it". Other companies have blown their annual budgets in Q1 because there was no plan other than "everyone just needs to use it...now!"

Initial corporate deployment of AI has been 100% FOMO induced peer pressure. That doesn't make it useless or overblown tech; just typical corporate idiocy in rolling out new stuff.

Quote:

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I suspect the rollout of AI will be similar

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Not really. The PC revolution was a slow scale with demand. Ditto for the internet as the implied telco costs in the earliest days was prohibitive to usage. Then everyone went absolutely bonkers in the 90s and overinvested in infrastructure capacity that later was not needed a a very large number of firms went bankrupt.

The level of capex is greater by several degrees this time around, and the hyper-scalers and datacenter operators literally need trillions of dollars in revenues to appear over the next 5 years make sense of it all. If that doesn't happen, you are going to see another very large wave of firms going bankrupt or taking massive write-downs.

cecil77 said:

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I suspect the rollout of AI will be similar.

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I think its going to echo the switch to digital music

current AI is 1999 Napster
the good semi free stuff will fade away and sketchy free or the pay with semi usable stuff will be here soon, still crappy interfaces
then that iteration will be replaced with 2 or 3 spotify type highly polished appliance type interfaces built for the masses, open source all but a memory

Disclaimer: I pay for gpt and have claude at work. Both are great for programming and data manipulation, both are ****ing garbage for research. tainted answers with hallucinations or crappy sources

ts5641 said:

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Good. I hope AI goes the way of the Dodo bird.

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But not before displacing a lot of [probably liberal] white collar workers, which is seemingly why it gets celebrated.

That's the most bubble thing though, "they" are chasing valuations and not revenue. Even if they only monetize minority stakes via crazy consortium investor groups. Buddy of mine is a SVP at Citi and they are starting an AI hardware vertical, and if Citi is doing it, then JPM and BofA are already doing it. This tells you that leverage could be a driver for a crash, but the reality is the collateral is likely good since data center buildout is so lengthy and increasingly contested. Anything funded would be fine from their end. However, I do see a world where the customer growth doesn't sustain the valuation (potentially because of a lack of compute even), depressed valuation hurts investment rounds, lower investment rounds impact off-balance sheet commitments for data center spend, and the spiral begins. Flavor 2 would be the fact that GPUs don't last as long as advertised and the CAPEX spend currently guided to isn't the complete picture, which would obliterate any type of scale story.

Here is a good article from Goldman: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/tracking-trillions-the-assumptions-shaping-scale-of-the-ai-build-out

The key take is that AI hardware is typically depreciated over 5-6 years, but NVIDIA's annual release cadence and the expectation (for their own valuation) is that each generation delivers step-function capability versus incremental improvements. Which means chips may become economically obsolete well before their accounting schedules expire. There is some counter that a tiered deployment de-risks, but that's based on the expectation that older hardware is maintaining high residual values. Which might not hold go-forward since it might be driven by lack of supply versus future prior-gen supply actually working for the next-gen compute needs.

This latest news round of Anthropic and OpenAI BOTH walking back their job doom-and-gloom in lock-step is essentially the icing on the cake for me. These people will say anything, lobby anything, build anything, that gets them their next $ of investment. Period. Not to mention they change their story just as AI-claimed layoffs has really ramped up over the last few weeks.

Because it sucks

“Ex-Microsoft exec says the company blew it with Al, as it did with mobile”

"Not even 3% of paying Copilot users use it even when it's pre-deployed right in their faces”

The Microsoft 3% problem. See Word and Excel features. pic.twitter.com/SXndiQL6Uc

— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) May 30, 2026

Not a huge fan of AI, but these companies are not going to allow power usage stop them, they will payola some President or congressman to get cheap power.

On the contrary, the great thing about CoPilot is that no one is using it. So, since I can no longer use Grok for free and ChatGPT will limit me, I can use CoPilot right in Bing, for free, for my unimportant random querying where I was previously being stymied by Grok and Chat.

Count me a fan.

ha ha.

BREAKING: CEO discovers tokens cost money pic.twitter.com/4rhm6ayAJU

— Alberta Tech (@albertadevs) June 2, 2026

Social Media + AI. What could possibly go wrong.