Nvidia as an object of worship
Lots of seemingly illogical behavior starts to make sense when you consider Nvidia, the company, as the principal deity in a religion practiced by the ruling / elite / stock-owning class.
You'll probably recall a couple years ago, when every app you use inserted an "AI" chat feature. Nobody was asking for it, hardly anyone found it useful. In most cases, it was obtrusive, easy to trigger by accident, and difficult (if not impossible) to turn off. This feature, which burns tokens on the backend, also costs the company money to implement and support. Why do it?
These are companies that spend many millions of dollars a year in salaries for user researchers, UX designers, and customer support agents–all of whom could have told (and probably did tell) leadership that the chatbot was annoying and unwanted. They pay financial experts to advise them on unnecessary spend to third party vendors. And they pay strategic leaders to weigh in on the risks of locking themselves into a partnership with a company whose costs may skyrocket.
It makes no sense, unless you consider that the decision makes Nvidia stocks go up. Directly, by consuming the LLM products made by companies who purchase computing infrastructure from Nvidia, and indirectly, by propagating the narrative that "AI" is everywhere, and inevitable, and amazing–a myth that also bolsters Nvidia's valuation.
Which in turn makes sense if you presume that the leaders of these organizations are more loyal to Nvidia than their own companies.
Another example: if you truly believe that LLMs will skyrocket human productivity, while simultaneously observing your competitors executing aggressive layoffs, the obvious move is to keep your workforce intact, augment its capacity with LLMs, and outperform the entire market. Choosing instead to level the playing field with layoffs of your own makes no sense–unless your goal is not to outperform, but to contribute to the narrative that "AI" is so powerful, it's already rendered half the workforce redundant. A narrative that helps sell Nvidia stock.
And another: regardless of how much you dote on your own personal chatbot, it makes strategic sense to allow your highly paid, strategically crucial subject matter experts to choose their own tools and ways of working. That autonomy increases output while helping you continue to recruit top talent. Mandating the use of LLMs company-wide, and tracking token usage, all of which undermines morale (and of course costs a lot of money) makes no sense. Unless ... unless your contribution to the story that props up Nvidia's value is more important than the growth, or even success, of your own company.
I'm sure you can think of other examples of this dynamic. Like, say, leaders and public figures who openly admit that they no longer read books, or who show up to interviews thoroughly unprepared to explain exactly how this technology is so transformative, despite having entire PR teams at their disposal. It's hard to give logical justification for matters of faith.