A Lesson From the Feedlot

A recent wildly popular post argued that a $5,000 token budget per engineer per month is optimal, and that anything less or more would be suboptimal. Some people now believe that consuming information produced by a sycophantic, seemingly intelligent AI will make you super intelligent, as if eating raw iron increased iron levels in your blood. Some loud executives are telling us that organizations no longer need translators, i.e., middle managers. AI is polluting our social discourse and work culture with insincere, misguided, and harmful narratives. On the other hand, people in the tech sector are insecure, stressed, and cynical about the implications. Some people I met over the weekend were contemplating quitting the profession. They were middle managers, stressed about being accountable for token usage and driving efficiency. I could sense their frustration at not being able to lead. I wrote about leading in low-trust situations before, but sustained low trust erodes organizational…