Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

@rv that is one kind of token. OP was referring to the tokens needed to pay for the compute AI agents are built.

Feels VERY similar to RCSA at Wells Fargo. Grossly inefficient, an embarrassment, and a total debacle. Nicely done, schartman!

@by "Is a token another name for license?"

No, AI is "pay to play" the cost is metered like water.

Think of an AI token as a single building block of language for a computer.

When you type text into an AI, it doesn't see whole words or sentences the way humans do. Instead, it breaks your text down into smaller, bite-sized pieces called tokens so it can process them.

Here is the simplest way to picture it:

How big is a token? A token can be a single character, a part of a word (like "un-" or "-ing"), a whole short word (like "cat"), or even a space.

The Rule of Thumb: In English, a good shortcut is that 1 token equals about 4 characters, or roughly 0.75 words.

@ce "wait what? So, the company is forcing us to use this thing and each time we type into it, they get charged? How in the world does that make sense"

So they can say we have achieved "AI Enablement" to the board and share holders :)

Sorry guys, I’m too busy in the metaverse to use AI. Check out these cool VR glasses. Look I can sit across a table from real you but talk to virtual you with my glasses.

The cost of tokens has been heavily subsidized in order to force its adoption and has been overhyped. This is the same business model you've seen by people lauded as disruptors. You know uber, who ki-led the taxi industry by subsidizing the cost of the infrastructure. Once the industry was their's, they could charge whatever they wanted. Another more obvious example having observed the behavior of senior executives would be co----e. The first hit is free. I once I need that buzz to scream at people at 2 in the morning. Well, they'll pay pretty much anything and they have no choice, because a can't admit they were wrong or have a problem. As for the leaders of the AI bo-m, they're dubbing enough to believe that if you park data centers in space, the vacuum will dissipate the heat. I'm trying to remember how thermoses work, maybe somebody could help me? What I seriously want to know is which fortune five hundred company and yes, this is true, because it was reported on by Microsoft, had a single person that spent in the first quarter of the year five hundred million dollars alone on tokens. I bet you they worked for Wells

@gk hahahahaha
Ba--s if true.

This is exactly what people should do.

I thought people were running custom scripts to burn tokens — to create the impression their workflows were AI-enabled?

@cq My team has been working with an AI-focused team for about a year as they've been developing their agentic AI that will "transform our workflow." After one year, their agent is still not operational, still in a very limited, basically useless pilot phase, and now they're bringing up how much it's costing and how they're getting pushback from above. I imagine this same thing is happening across the company.

This is yet another shiny new object with huge hype by leaders that get anointed as leaders in said shiny new object. They get the comp, hype and a55 kissing, then move on to the next BS.

We've seen this tune play before-- Cloud, Agile, Wave/Cloud PC to name a few. New data center direction is a looming wake up call on costs when they realize that forcing people to implement far more than they need and somebody will ask why the f**k we're paying for capacity that's at low/no utilization.

And yes of course the hype around AI, the chosen ones getting kudos for implementing 1/2 baked ideas that don't need LLMs but doing it for the vibes. Use AI, use AI, use AI, use AI. Holy cow, how much is this costing us?

So me asking copilot for a weather report everyday to keep my job by using AI isn’t cost effective? Gosh, who knew. Remember what you measure becomes the important thing whether it’s good or bad. You told us to use AI so we did.

@bx No. It's because these MO--NS insisted people use AI or their jobs would be in jeopardy. Has nothing to do with "how it works". These clueless id--ts pushed it and now they own it.

@ce it's better than that. they're realizing all this agentic AI costs a boatload of money that they didn't plan to spend. But they fired the people who can do the work because of the promise, so and the end of it all they get nada.

That's group think for ya. FAFO

@c3 wait what? So, the company is forcing us to use this thing and each time we type into it, they get charged? How in the world does that make sense?

@bw we could find the strongest, most capable head of IT in the entire world.

They'd still report to a clueless entitled guy who would tell them the wrong way to do everything.

@by AI agents require compute, and a token is a certain amount of use. indivuals get a fixed number. Then the company needs to pay for more. $$$$$ Think pay per view, for programming lol.

@by No.
Tokens are the words in the input and output data that gets sent/received to Copilot.

Is a token another name for license?

This place may be a joke but it isnt because they put some limits on token usage. That is just industry standard. If you need more tokens talk to your manager with justification.

Serious question- why can’t we find a strong head of IT? It pays good money. There must be someone who can turn it around. It’s hard to believe we can’t find someone who can lead and knows technology.

many companies are starting to realize that AI costs more than the people it is replacing. It also has moved the bottlenecks to the top end.

This is the AI hype train meeting reality.

Every AI investor/creator was telling CEOs that AI would lead to a 2-3x productivity jump and the accompanied savings in salaries. The reality is that productivity has increased 10-20%, and token cost has eaten the savings and then some.

The smarter take on this is that WF is now restricting AI use from your programming peer/your agentic coding agent, to proofread before ship/presentation. If you're in an org that's limiting token use, you're not determined to be a valuable AI user, you've been identified as an AI cost sink.

Just another example of this organization having no clue what it's doing and putting the cart before the horse, again, and having to shift strategy after a year or two of preaching the previous strategy.

No worries. TK is working on a secret WF-LLM. Once built, token cost will be free.

@an That's a given with this place. Completely falling apart. Technology is an absolute disaster. They literally cannot thing beyond their noses.

Guarantee the "use Copilot 3 times a week or you lose your license and we tell your manager" mandate turns into "don't overuse AI or you lose your license and we tell your manager."

Place is an absolute joke. All we heard in IT was that every damn day better involve AI. And, of course, typical WF, "we have a report of your usage" (which was NEVER correct). Now, the clownshow wants to pump the brakes.

You just can't make up how bad this place is to work and the pi-s poor decisions made daily.