Are we 'tokenmaxxing' too close to the sun?
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Corporate America's new favorite flex is the number of AI tokens it burns.
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AI companies price their products based on tokens, which measure usage. Now employees are aggressively spending them — tokenmaxxing — to tout their hardcore AI adoption.
The concept first took hold in Silicon Valley, but it's spreading fast. Visa proudly shared how it doubled its token usage from 1 trillion in February to 2 trillion in March.
It's also the latest way to evaluate employees. JPMorgan and Disney have internal dashboards tracking employees' AI usage. We also got a look at how Disney employees are using AI based on screenshots of its "AI Adoption Dashboard" viewed by BI's James Faris.
Startup founders also debated the merits of tokenmaxxing with BI's Henry Chandonnet. Skeptics say they can't afford to burn through tokens on their tight budgets. Supporters say they can't afford not to tokenmaxx in such a competitive race.
What do you think? (Yes, you!)
We're running a survey to gather readers' thoughts on tokenmaxxing. You can take it here. In the meantime, these are the biggest points around the tokenmaxxing debate:
Money: Tech executives say they need to spend big to reach their AI goals. Tokenmaxxing fits that mindset. Still, incentivizing workers to do something that you know will run up your bill feels like a disaster (and a CFO's nightmare).
I decided to ask one. Amy Butte, a veteran CFO who is now a strategic advisor at Navan, told me the issue is a lack of standards for finance professionals to work from. Without key performance indicators for AI development, it's tough to judge spending effectively.
AI sprawl: Democratizing the development of AI tools is tricky. If John in accounting builds an application that speeds up his work, that's great. If John, Jim, Jane, and Jessica in accounting all build separate tools that sort of do the same thing but don't talk to each other, that's a big problem.
Tech departments have traditionally had a tough time tracking under-the-radar tech projects, known as "shadow IT." With tokenmaxxing, you're encouraging employees to do it. And even some of the most sophisticated companies, like Amazon, are struggling to keep a handle on it all.
Gaming the system: Everyone wants their workers to use AI. A leaderboard creates some friendly competition. The reality is that human nature means people will try to game the system.
Anthony Moisant, Indeed's chief information officer, told BI he doesn't want a token leaderboard because it creates the wrong incentives.
"Even if it's not malicious, they just inherently are following the incentive," Moisant said. "They're following that carrot that they're chasing, and it often leads to bad results."
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