tante

"Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation"

Of course they are. "AI" people are Blockchain people and they'd love to force people into money that _they_ control

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-compute-compensation-software-engineers-greg-brockman-2026-3

Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation

AI inference emerges as a critical factor in tech compensation, impacting engineer productivity and Silicon Valley hiring dynamics.

Business Insider
Mar 11 at 9:02amWeb
Show threadAleksandr KoltsoffMar 11

@tante "As a coder in the AI era, if you don't have access to massive compute, you might end up producing far less software than your colleagues, threatening your career prospects."

Whoever produces the most amount of "software" will win. /s

Show threadtanteMar 11
@nihkeys more is always better as we know.
Show threadPhilMar 11
@tante @nihkeys Number must always go up
Show threadHanno ZullaMar 11

@tante

There's precedent.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-german-city-is-paying-its-alcoholics-in-beer-to-clean-the-streets/

A German City Is Paying Its Alcoholics in Beer to Clean the Streets

On October 1, the German city of Essen will launch a program that incentivizes the homeless, addicts, and alcoholics with beer and cigarettes in exchange for their aid in cleaning the city square.

VICE
Show threadtanteMar 11
@hzulla ewwww
Show threadHanno ZullaMar 11
@tante Cynical snark aside, there's a rich history of abusive employers paying their addicted workers with the drug as part of their compensation, e.g. mining companies. It's a concept that's been around for centuries.
Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminMar 11
@hzulla @tante I'd say lotteries are also similar to this. It's all gross.
Show threadchristian mockMar 11
@hzulla @tante Or the drug kingpin pays the small-time dealers (the ones that get caught and go to jail) in drugs for their sales work.
Show threadVytautas ButėnasMar 11
@hzulla
At least beer have liquid and calories in it. Not so much elements that human body requires, in AI tokens.
@tante
Show threadDaniël Franke Mar 11
@tante Hype is a flat circle? :P
Show threadEndlessMasonMar 11
@ainmosni @tante
It is known.
Show threadChristie Malry Ⓐ ☭Mar 11
@tante desperate to find any way of turning their white elephant into money, id love to see how many people have actually paid a cent upfront for it
Show threadFlorence MaraninchiMar 11
@tante
Whaaat?
Show threadmeeooMar 11
@tante but is it compensation if you spend all of it on your job?
Show threadIsaac Freeman6d ago

@meeoo If you're asking that question, you're clearly not hardcore enough.

Ask yourself: are you dedicated enough to your job to make it your entire identity and not be paid for it? Or are you a loser with loving relationships and fulfilling hobbies who lives in a _community_ like some kind of happy person?

@tante

Show threadkoehntopp ~ :Mar 11

@tante
"Silicon Valley is buzzing" has become an antipattern.

I've gone through the dot com bubble in the 90s - hard. It was way less weird back then, though.

Show threadSam VinesMar 11
@koehntopp @tante I mean I read the recent harpers article on silicon valley and it seems pretty obvious that anything these people are excited about is VERY BAD

https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai-startup-roy-lee/

I find myself agreeing with this part


> “He’s scared he’s not doing the right thing, and because of the fucked-up world we live in, people who should be in The Hague are giving him twenty million dollars. Something bad is gonna happen here, something really fucking bad is gonna happen.”
Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss

Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking

Harper's Magazine
Show threadFrederic ThevenetMar 11

@tante

AI tokens emerge as a new component of tech salaries, alongside traditional pay elements.

JFC!! It's 19th century mill towns all over again! How is it even possible for anyone not to see through that bullshit instantly?!?

Show threadMaciej LMar 11
@tante Looking at the headline I thought this was another "UBI paid out in company scrip" story we all heard during the crypto era but this is so much dumber than that.
Show threadColeen WalterMar 11
@tante This is a weird idea. It reminds me of the company script of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Show threadMark LynchMar 11
@tante today is the 70th day of 2026, the year is only just short of one-fifth done, and that is already one of the most depressing things I can imagine, brought to life by fucking AI bros 😩. Any chance we can fire up the large hadron collider again and see if we can fork a new timeline, because this one is a complete bust
Show thread⁂ L. RhodesMar 11

@tante "He added that usage per user is growing much faster than overall user growth, a sign that AI compute is becoming even scarcer and more valuable."

Or a sign that the entire market for AI compute depends on the outsized consumption of a comparatively small cohort of "whales."

Show threadWim🧮Mar 11
@lrhodes @tante The agentic AI workflows likely act as attractors. They use orders of magnitude more tokens than ordinary queries.
Show threadJPMar 11
@lrhodes @tante "spiders georg as business model"
Show threadspangheroMar 11
@tante Ironmasters and mine owners, 2026 style.
Show threadPaul HealeyMar 11
@tante How does ‘AI compute’ address the corporate theft of IP? If nothing is given back for harvesting content, the only beneficiaries are those who are driving and fuelling inequality and injustice: hence the Broligarchs! #DialecticInference
Show threadsabikMar 11
@tante
Resources to be used for the employer are not compensation?
Show threadRaymond RussellMar 11

@sabik @tante

My thoughts exactly. Sounds like a circle jerk to me. How is some compute better than a decent amount of annual leave, real actual money you can spend in the real world, etc.

Show threadsabikMar 11

@raymierussell @tante
I mean, if it was compute for private use, that would be compensation — not very useful compensation, but compensation

But it's compute for use at work

Show threadSam VinesMar 11
@tante I can still buy food and pay my rent with AI compute though right?

Show threadBj�rnMar 11
@tante soooo... "pay to work" is it, at least for "agentic" software devs?
Show threadStephenMar 11
@tante ah, Company Store 2.0
Show threaddonMar 11
@tante let them eat AI compute?
Show threadLarry GarfieldMar 11
@tante I hate literally every part of that.
Show threadhalf/byteMar 11

@Crell @tante Part of me wants to at least once experience that in a recruiting situation. I want to be the person laughing my arse off, taking my jacket and just leaving the room.

Just for the comedic effect.

To the go and cry myself to sleep, of course.

Show threadLarry GarfieldMar 11
@halfbyte @tante At this point I'd settle for getting an interview at all. Trolling the interviewers for being asswipes comes second.
Show threadhalf/byteMar 11
@Crell @tante fair point.
Show threadj-r conlinMar 11

@tante

AI companies rediscover the concept of arbitrage in 3.. 2..

Show threadJason LefkowitzMar 11
@tante Big Idea: Company Scrip
Show threadJason LefkowitzMar 11
@tante Finally, tech workers can experience the thrilling lifestyle of a West Virginia coal miner in 1912
Show threadBlumenKidMar 11
@tante my output is completely fine utilizing a local LLM for tab completion and free Gemini. Ah well, but who wants to learn to actually produce quality code anymore. We all know LOC is the REAL measure of success, Jensen said so.
Show threadSy ︲ 🌷🍁1d ago

@tante

I once dreamed up a replacement for advertisement with crypto mining, so I think giving people compute tokens as payment is fine (and kinda silly).

LLM tokens sound like a hilarious currency.