AI Costs Are Quietly Exploding, HS2 now £102.7bn, Waymo Steals Luggage
That's Dustin Devan, CEO of Ediphi and it's one of the sharpest takes on the AI spend debate we've had on the showThis week on Bricks, Bucks and Bytes we're joined by Cameron Page of ClearStory, processing $3.5B in change orders...
“Mandating how many AI tokens your engineers burn isn’t a productivity metric. It has nothing to do with outcomes.” That’s Dustin Devan, CEO of Ediphi, offering one of the sharpest insights into the ongoing AI spending debate featured on this episode.
This week on Bricks, Bucks and Bytes, hosts are joined by Cameron Page of ClearStory, a company handling $3.5 billion in change orders monthly, and Sophia Millar of Sonnaball Instruments, who is innovating real-time acoustic weld defect detection before inspection stages.
Episode Highlights
- Exploration of why enterprise AI costs continue to rise despite declining token prices.
- How ClearStory is streamlining change order management for 7,500 companies, replacing traditional email and spreadsheet workflows.
- The significance of a dataset containing 1.3 million categorized change orders as a valuable resource in construction management.
- Innovations in prefab quality control through acoustic weld defect detection by Sonnaball Instruments.
Context and Discussion
The conversation covers a wide range of topics including the challenges of managing AI token consumption in engineering workflows, balancing efficiency and customer demands, and reflections on significant infrastructure projects like the UK’s High-Speed Rail (HS2) now costing £102.7 billion. The episode also touches on a notable customer incident involving Waymo and broader discussions on data center possibilities and trillionaire wealth.
Where to Listen
Listen to the full episode on Spotify and YouTube.
Chapter guide
-
0:00
Intro -
00:56
Reunion and Introduction -
01:57
AI Tokens and Their Costs -
07:57
Managing AI Token Usage -
11:21
Balancing Speed and Customer Needs -
15:13
Efficiency in AI Usage -
20:21
Waymo's Customer Service Incident -
21:57
Discussion on Expensive Rail Projects -
22:01
The Cost of High-Speed Rail in the UK -
26:03
Comparing Costs: What Could $100 Billion Buy? -
27:44
Debating Income Tax and Jeff Bezos' Proposal -
30:18
The Rise of Trillionaires: Elon Musk's Potential -
32:07
Data Centers in Space: A Feasible Future? -
35:09
ClearStory: Revolutionizing Change Order Management -
42:00
Streamlining Change Order Management -
45:36
ClearStory's Market Position and Growth -
47:09
Leveraging Change Order Data for Insights -
50:01
Innovations in Welding Defect Detection -
56:32
The Role of AI in Welding Quality Control
