- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/26/ai-cost-human-workers Uber’s chief technology officer already blew through his full 2026 AI budget due to token costs, according to The Information.
Lol. Lmao even
Good stuff. One small note: I’m not sure how useful the distinction of “Chinese state-sponsored companies” is in recent history when comparing to the US, let alone now. The US has retooled much of federal research engine toward promoting US AI. Even fired the NSB (among many other long standing, expert driven advisory boards) to replace it with a bunch of tech baron stooges. States are offering unprecedented payouts to data centers. The AI hyperscalers already have a bailout all but guaranteed when the bubble pops. It’s all state-sponsored, just with extra steps.
The Chinese AI companies being state sponsored just means that they can go longer and throw more money at development without turning profit than other investor driven companies.
The US is certainly throwing a bloated amount of money at AI too. And a much as it infuriates me, they’ll almost certainly absorb the bubble pop with tax another bailout for criminal corporate behavior. But it’s not quite been a direct pipeline of openly flowing cash, just yet. They’re still paying for discrete contracts which have to be approved in the budget. They’ve been massive contracts, but they’re still making these companies compete e each other for them too. Like with the recent flip from DOJ contracts with Anthropic to OpenAI, for example.
In China, they’re buying in supporting the entire industry. They’re building infrastructure for AI data centers, giving them grants and subsidies, have direct ownership in the companies, and had made specific carve outs in their laws to give AI development deregulated room to do what it needs. I’m not in favor of either approach. Just pointing out that China’s approach does seem to have been an advantage in the AI race, or at least was enough of one that they made up a ton of ground, and maybe passed their US counterparts.