The practice of extreme AI usage known as "tokenmaxxing" was initially encouraged but now employers face huge usage bills ad they want to cut back. Workplace expert, Josh Evans, says we've become too obsessed with using the technology." Using more AI doesn't necessarily mean that they're creating more value. We wouldn't measure a carpenter's success by how many times they swung a hammer. We would look at what they actually built. I think this is where a lot of organization's are getting it wrong. they're asking employees how much AI you are using- when they should be asking what problems are you solving or what meaningful impact are you making?" He said.
Amazon has run into this problem before. In May 2026, the company shut down an internal leaderboard after discovering employees were gaming their AI usage numbers to climb the rankings, a direct example of the tokenmaxxing the new memo warns against.
In a memo, Amazon laid out three measurements: token usage, AI tool adoption rate, and the volume of code changes and reviews, as “deeply flawed” ways to gauge how AI is being used. Leaning on them, it warns, can drive up costs and add unnecessary complexity to engineering work.
Leaders are trying to find a happy medium between operational costs and technical efficiency. “What we don’t want to see is wasted effort where we are going and spending those tokens solving problems that don’t matter and sometimes it’s hard to know, so we do need to have some appetite for experimentation,” Marc Brooker, a vice president and distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services said.
Companies ranging in size from Amazon to startups are struggling to determine the best way to harness the potential of artificial intelligence. "I'm incredibly optimistic about AI, it has potential to eliminate mundane tasks, and it can really unlock extraordinary human capacities, but we can't confuse efficiency for effectiveness, and we definitely can't confuse activity for accomplishment." Evans said.