Amazon staff have identified cases of what they called “catastrophically expensive” cost overruns caused by mistakes in how the company has deployed AI and a lack of spending controls. Senior engineers told colleagues in a staff meeting on Tuesday that attempts to switch tasks from conventional programming to using AI models had led to “unplanned” spending, said multiple people familiar with the matter. Engineers were working to create “automated” guardrails for future projects, among other measures to keep a lid on costs, the people said. The episode highlights the difficulty that even the biggest tech companies are having integrating AI into their daily operations without overspending. “It’s difficult to figure out how much anything [AI related] costs,” one senior Amazon employee told the FT.

Full report : Amazon staff find “catastrophically expensive” AI costs due to a lack of controls, like $1.8M on Claude to fail to match author details with listings.