A controversy has emerged surrounding employee limits on AI tool usage at Taiwan’s IC design company MediaTek.
Analyst Kuo Che-lung said reducing the limits could hurt development efficiency and even mentioned selling his holdings.
MediaTek responded that it encourages AI use and assigns internal or external models according to each task.
3-line summary
1. The controversy over MediaTek’s AI tool limits has spread
2. Kuo Che-lung criticized the reduction in limits
3. The company’s position and online claims should be distinguished
Controversy begins with a claim of 2.2 dollars per day
The controversy began with an online claim that MediaTek had significantly reduced engineers’ AI token usage limits. Reports circulated figures of 10 dollars per month, or approximately 2.2 dollars per day, along with claims that employees were required to use a self-built, open-source-based system instead of external AI tools.
However, these figures and claims concerning the internal system’s server capacity and intranet issues cite online reports. MediaTek has not specifically confirmed the limits or system failures in question. Therefore, these claims need to be considered separately from the principles the company has officially stated, rather than being accepted as confirmed internal policy or a disruption to work.
Kuo Che-lung: “There must be measures before cutting costs”
Kuo Che-lung, chief investment officer at Taiwan investment advisory firm More Securities Investment, criticized the idea that AI tools are important to the productivity of chip design and software development personnel. He said that the trend of reducing external AI tokens and using local or open-source models is appearing globally, but argued that sufficient alternatives must first be prepared in order to reduce costs.
Kuo Che-lung said that if there were no improvement, he could sell all of his MediaTek shares. This was a public statement and investment judgment on his part; it does not mean that a management change at the company or the sale of his shares has been confirmed.
At the time of reports on October 6, MediaTek’s share price came under intraday selling pressure, reaching 4,940 Taiwanese dollars (4940), and as of 11:34 a.m. stood at 225 Taiwanese dollars, or 4.36%, below the previous trading day. No basis was presented for concluding that the day’s price movement was the result of the AI policy controversy alone.
MediaTek’s response: “automatic assignment”
MediaTek said in response to the matter that it encourages employees to make broad use of AI tools to improve productivity. It also explained that, through intelligent automatic adjustment, it automatically assigns either an internal dedicated model or a high-performance external model according to the complexity of the task.
What the company emphasized was an operating approach that uses tokens efficiently according to need, rather than simply providing a large number of tokens. It also presented a plan to support growing demand for AI use over the long term and in a sustainable manner.
What can be confirmed in this controversy is that criticism was raised publicly and that the company responded with principles of encouraging use and automatic assignment. To assess the actual limits and on-the-ground user experience, further specific explanations from the company—not online claims—are needed.
References
Tags #MediaTek #聯發科 #MediaTekNews #AITokens #AITools #Engineers #SemiconductorDesign #ICDesign #KuoCheLung #AIProductivity #OpenSourceAI #TaiwanStocks