‘That doesn’t sound very healthy’: Amazon’s reported tokenmaxxing might gamify AI usage, analyst warns

Amazon employees are now joining the ranks of those “tokenmaxxing” at their boss’ request, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Only these Amazon employees are more resistant—they’ve reportedly been running the company’s internal AI tool on trivial tasks to inflate their token counts and climb the leaderboard measuring their usage.

“Tokenmaxxing” is a burgeoning trend at the hyperscalers where employers are rewarding employees for using AI the most, quantified by using tokens. While it isn’t clear that the usage determines much more than brownie points at Amazon, similar behavior was reported other big hyperscalers, like Microsoft and Meta. Notably, all three of these companies are heavily invested in the very tech that they’re encouraging their employees to use. Amazon even reported in their recent earnings that Anthropic’s increased valuation made up nearly half of the company’s profits. 

Gil Luria, head of technology research at brokerage D.A. Davidson, said the dynamic concerned him.

“That doesn’t sound very healthy,” Luria told Fortune. “You get the behavior that you create the ince...