> Isn't it ironic that we have to waste our precious and expensive human brain cycles to think about how to use AI cheaply so that it is not more expensive than us?

Nothing ironic about it, it's basic engineering efficiency optimization.

Just today I was calculating that if money was not a factor at all, we could simply use Mythos to handle all of our continuous security scanning needs, at a cost of about $15 million a year.

Well, my budget is far (far, far, far, far) below 15M a year, so that's not going to work. So I must find compromises to make it work within budget. The single most important engineering constraint is always budget. Everything would be easier with infinite money, but there is never infinite money.