Companies' new budget-friendly approach to AI could create a corporate caste system

Companies’ new AI diets won’t be applied evenly, widening the gap between the AI haves and have-nots.

The teams with the biggest budgets will have the best chance of proving AI’s value. The ones that don’t may not get the opportunity to shine.

Ideally, resources will flow to the best ideas. But the projects with the most AI tokens might just look like the best ideas because of the extra budget. Executives might also fall into the sunk-cost fallacy, unwilling to pull back on a project they’ve already bet big on.

The result is a quasi-caste system for AI tokens that’s bound to ruffle feathers internally. And it’s the type of thing that could be tough to shake once you put it in motion.