PodRocket - A web development podcast from LogRocket Navigating the AI bubble, the 10x AI engineer, and the Cloudflare vs. Perplexity data grab
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Aug 28, 2025 Paige Niedringhaus, a Staff Software Engineer at Blues and co-host of Front End Fire, dives into the sustainability of the AI industry and the reality of the so-called '10x AI engineer.' The panel debates whether the AI hype is akin to past tech bubbles and discusses the ethical concerns surrounding data scraping, particularly with Cloudflare's actions. They also touch on GitHub's leadership shake-up and recent advancements like Vercel's AI SDK, shedding light on the future of developers in an evolving tech landscape.
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AI Demand Is Real, Sustainability Is The Question
- AI demand is proven because developers and users already rely on it for concrete tasks like coding and search.
- The challenge is making usage sustainable and economically viable at scale.
Personal Spend On Claude Highlighted Costs
- Paul tracked his Claude usage and nearly spent $200 reaching ~10k credits in one month.
- He highlighted electricity and infrastructure as major hidden inference costs.
Not All AI Features Survive The Hype
- Many products just “slap AI” on features without meaningful value, creating an oversupply of low-quality AI apps.
- Those shallow AI features will likely be defunded or ignored while useful integrations persist.