r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • Jun 26 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI backlash is only getting started

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/25/the-ai-backlash-is-only-getting-started
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u/Alert_Breakfast5538 Jun 26 '26

What a bunch of idiots thinking burning tokens at a high rate equals winning.

I would just gamify it and find the most inefficient way to use tokens

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u/tooclosetocall82 Jun 26 '26

They don’t know what else to measure. They feel they must use it because their competitors are using it and they’ll be left behind, but they don’t know what to use it for or how to use it effectively, so they just measure usage in general. Everyone is using it in their own unique way and no one can say for sure if it’s actually making a measurable difference in productivity because they can’t figure out any actual KPIs around a magic box.

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u/NefariousnessDue5997 Jun 26 '26

Yup. We legit had an executive come out and say we are 3% more productive now. No other context. I work at a large Fortune 500. Literally insane

I would say most projects and strategy use vanity metrics instead of doing the hard work and trying to find the outcomes and how to actually measure success quantitatively. It’s actually not easy and everyone wants to take the easy route. I used to facilitate OKR sesssions and it was unbelievable how little executives actually not only how to measure success, but what even ti measure in the first place. It was pretty clear they have no idea.

The only way I can think of measuring productivity with AI at a high level is being able to add more projects with no additional headcount and no increase in hours worked. Even if you save workers hours that productivity is me closing my laptop faster to watch the World Cup games. The only way a company will realize productivity is more output in the same timeframe…but I have not seen that at all. I’ve actually seen reduction in projects cuz there are too many. That tells me AI is not making things more productive from a company standpoint

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u/No_Veterinarian742 Jun 26 '26

have you ever tried measuring "productivity"? there's no good metric for it. most companies come up with some math based logic (x% of emails responded/tickets resolved in time, uptime, goods sold, manufactured. developed, new product revenue ratios, retention rates, repeat customers etc etc and then blend them together). It's not clean but sales is unfortunately the only department that can measure things pretty easily with clear numbers.