People are using « tokens used » as productivity metric ?!

[jmax@mastodon.social]

@romeu I'm gonna prompt me a new minivan!

[lu_leipzig@troet.cafe]

@romeu ...from the people who brought us megawatts as a unit of computing power and "compute" as a noun.

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@romeu It's been interesting watching people compete to see who can burn the most money, time, and resources. I expect this will come out about as well as you'd expect.

[procrvstinvtion@infosec.exchange]

@romeu I’ve read about token allotment being a contract negotiation. “Salary isn’t the big argument anymore, token allotment is” to quote an ai bro

[isaackuo@spacey.space]

@romeu I asked LLM AI to tell me what productivity metric we should use and it told me LLM AI tokens used.

I also asked my coke dealer what productivity metric we should use and he told me grams of coke used.

I don't trust my coke dealer but I sure do absolutely trust my LLM AI.

[johnofrobotz@mastodon.girolab.foo]

@romeu as soon as "Prompt Engineers" became a thing, this was bound to happen. Also terrible, but at least SLOC metrics had review and testing built in.

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

@romeu @cammerman

Our whole society is rife with this: mistaking consumption for productivity

[doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org]

@romeu Generative AI makes people so dumb...

[mo@mastodon.ml]

@romeu technically it is reasonable, if you aim for it to be lower, not higher

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu A more useful and accurate analysis may be as follows: tokens used will be seen as an adoption metric, and implicitly as a loyalty metric.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu Believing that AI is bringing about a productivity revolution, management will see AI as an opportunity yes, but primarily as a necessity, and an existential threat.

[viq@social.hackerspace.pl]

@romeu very relevant post from @fesshole
https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/116153883462428890

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu They will fear that unless everyone gets on board the AI juggernaut, the organization will be disrupted by new-fangled competitors who are reaping the insane productivity benefits that they have been convinced exist.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu Hence the problem to be solved will be seen as one of adoption, and the obstacle to be overcome, the friction caused by recalcitrant, stubborn, backwards dinosaurs. And tokens used is an adoption metric, albeit one that is extremely vulnerable to Goodhart's law.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu If you don't use any tokens, certainly it must mean that you're part of the problem and undermining the express will of management.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu The worst part is that the fear of the existential threat is not necessarily entirely unfounded, on at least two grounds. Regardless of whether or not there is any real productivity boost due to AI.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu Customer management is likely to have bought into the same productivity narratives as your management, and will be looking to get a radically better deal than before. Whether or not that is possible for anyone to deliver.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu And there will be no shortage of would-be competitors popping up claiming that they are in fact reaping those benefits and can deliver on those wishes. Whether or not that's true, both in the short and long term, doesn't matter: harm can be immediate.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu It may all be mirages, but people make all kinds of stupid decisions based on mirages.

[syklemil@snabelen.no]

@romeu
I think the best way to handle token usage minimums that I've seen was someone who had the LLM spit out Alexander the great fanfic and such that they just stuck in a document to never read

Which also goes to show how idiotic. minimums are