In practice, it's more like companies want to spend money on AI because they believe it will save money somewhere else. If instead they see extra cost, then they get all confused. They can't bring themselves to believe that in their particular case maybe the benefit isn't worth the cost; they're axiomatically conditioned to believe they have to keep using it, and so therefore they have to make cuts somewhere else. It's insane.

I went through this personally. I had a glut of project ideas I wanted to get through. I signed up for the $200/month thing. I caught up. My agent sat idle. It was hard to decide to cut my plan. I felt initial pressure to search and hunt for other ideas to code, ideas that were pretty stupid. I finally downscaled my plan; I got hold of myself. But that's easier to do for an individual than it is for a company.

In normal economic theory it's easier to understand. You're at a particular scale. You have the opportunity to automate, but does it make sense for you? I could go out and buy a riding mower right now, but my lawn is less than a quarter acre. The riding mower lets me scale up, but I don't have something that can benefit from it.