“Innovation is expensive,” said VP of Engineering Sarah Jenkins, ignoring the smoke coming from the server room. “Our bill grows 30% every month because the AI thinks ‘what is the return policy?’ and ‘can I return this?’ are two totally different mysteries. We pay full price for the robot to think about both questions from scratch every single time.”

“We view these costs as an investment in staff independence,” explained Director of People Ops Mike Ross. “When Kevin in Sales asks the bot to write a haiku about quarterly goals, it costs twelve dollars per stanza. But it builds culture.” Ross then approved a budget increase so the marketing team could ask the AI what rhymes with “synergy” for the rest of the afternoon.

At press time, the company implemented a strict cost-saving measure where employees must now Venmo the CFO a dollar before asking the AI what the wifi password is.

Inspired by the real story: Companies are losing money because LLMs don’t cache identical questions like “What’s your return policy?” and re-process them every time. Read the full story.