Amazon employees are 'tokenmaxxing' due to pressure to use AI tools

Amazon employees are reportedly using the company's internal AI platform MeshClaw to automate routine or unnecessary tasks as pressure grows to demonstrate AI adoption, in a practice known as "tokenmaxxing," which refers to maximizing token usage. The company set targets requiring more than 80% of developers to use AI tools weekly and tracked consumption on internal leaderboards. Amazon stated usage statistics would not factor into performance evaluations, but multiple employees believed managers were monitoring the data.

Source: Ars Technica | 2026-05-12