by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tools cost money. Tools amplify abilities. It may seem obvious, but consider if the amplification is worth the cost.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tools cost money. Tools also amplify the ability to do something. A lever helps me lift an object. The lever is not free. Is it worth it? That is pretty basic. Of course adults know these and consider them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, several things from this past week weakened my certainty in adults. At Meta, engineers and others were using the AI tools from other companies. They “ran up the bill” beyond estimations. Instead of firing the estimators for being wrong, managers chastised those using the tools. I have no doubt of similar happenings at other companies. Meta is in the news because a few persons “leaked” this news to the news journalers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And then I attended a seminar where a person from a famous consulting firm (names withheld to protect the guilty) advised those who signed contracts at government agencies to know what they were signing before they signed it. It seems that they were signing contracts whereby users who used tools also “ran up the bill” beyond estimations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Several things here that I am embarrassed to write. First, don’t buy something that you don’t understand. Read the fine print and understand what it means to pay-by-the-token or something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, do not make incentives for people to use tools. If there are incentives, they should be for products produced, not resources consumed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, if a tool costs a dollar and that tool means you don’t have to hire someone else at a hundred dollars, that dollar spent on the tool is a good use of a dollar. At third-and-a-half is, if you spend the dollar on the tool, don’t spend a hundred dollars to hire a person who now has nothing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, I am embarrassed to write those three things. AI, or whatever shiny tool appears at the tool store, does not break these and other tenets of business. Sometimes we need reminders. Let’s do better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips Tools cost money. Tools amplify abilities. It may seem obvious, but consider if the amplification is worth the cost. Tools cost money. Tools also amplify the ability to do something. A lever helps me lift an object. The lever is not free. Is it worth it? That is pretty basic. Of course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[469,9,41,368,292],"tags":[470,132,163,365,295],"class_list":["post-4646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-management","category-money","category-resources","category-tools","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-management","tag-money","tag-resources","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4647,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions\/4647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}