Fast Company reports that product teams across big companies and startups are working harder than ever, burning vast numbers of AI tokens, yet delivering little measurable value. The analysis, based on two decades of software development experience, finds that AI now drafts requirements, writes test frameworks, builds reference data, and ships code — but whether this activity produces better products remains unclear.
The core tension, according to Fast Company, lies in the hidden costs of AI adoption. Every token has a price: compute, energy, money, and human attention. Teams are burning computational resources on the back end while burning out employees on the front end. The return on both investments is hard to identify, the piece argues.
A CEO at the 2026 Fast Company Impact Council Annual Meeting drew a contrast with earlier technology waves. “No one mandated that we use the iPhone. We use it because it works,” the CEO said, adding that no one was ever rewarded for topping an iPhone leaderboard. The implication: AI mandates are not a strategy.
Good product decisions, Fast Company contends, emerge from simple, durable questions — not top-down directives. Do customers need this? Will they pay? Can we build it, and is the value durable? The piece suggests that chasing AI usage metrics distracts teams from asking those fundamental questions.
From a separate Fast Company analysis on team behavior under pressure, the article notes a pattern called the “Big Freeze,” where rising uncertainty, restructures, and shifting expectations cause teams to hesitate, wait for permission, and avoid raising concerns. The environment, not mindset, is the root cause of this paralysis.