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

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Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently.

The Seattle-based group has started to widely deploy its in-house “MeshClaw” product in recent weeks, allowing employees to create AI agents that can connect to workplace software and carry out tasks on a user’s behalf, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Some employees said colleagues were using the software to automate additional, unnecessary AI activity to increase their consumption of tokens—units of data processed by models.

They said the move reflected pressure to adopt the technology after Amazon introduced targets for more than 80 percent of developers to use AI each week, and earlier this year began tracking AI token consumption on internal leader boards.

“There is just so much pressure to use these tools,” one Amazon employee told the FT. “Some people are just using MeshClaw to maximize their token usage.”

Amazon has told employees that the AI token statistics would not be used in performance evaluations. But several staff members said they believed managers were monitoring the data.

“Managers are looking at it,” said another current employee. “When they track usage it creates perverse incentives and some people are very competitive about it.”

Silicon Valley groups are pushing to increase adoption of generative AI tools, as companies seek to demonstrate returns on vast spending commitments to AI infrastructure and embed the technology more deeply into day-to-day work.

Amazon this year is expected to spend $200 billion in capital expenditure, the vast majority of which will go toward AI and data center infrastructure.

The e-commerce group had posted team-wide statistics on AI usage by its staff, but recently limited access so that only employees themselves and managers can view their stats. Managers are discouraged from using token use to measure performance, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Meta employees have similarly engaged in so-called “tokenmaxxing” to improve their standing on internal leader boards.

The MeshClaw tool that some employees have used to increase their statistics was inspired by OpenClaw, which became a viral sensation in February. OpenClaw allows users to run agents locally on their own hardware, including computers and laptops.

Amazon’s MeshClaw can initiate code deployments, triage emails, and interact with apps such as Slack, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company said in a statement that the tool enabled “thousands of Amazonians to automate repetitive tasks each day” and was one example of the group “empowering teams” to experiment and adopt AI tools.

“We’re committed to the safe, secure, and responsible development and deployment of generative AI for our customers,” it added.

More than three dozen Amazon employees worked on the in-house tool, according to internal documents. One recent memo describing the bot said: “It dreams overnight to consolidate what it learned, monitors your deployments while you’re in meetings, and triages your email before you wake up.”

Multiple Amazon employees said they were concerned about the security risks of an AI tool that was granted permission to act on a user’s behalf. This risks situations where the agent may make errors or undertake unintended actions.

“The default security posture terrifies me,” one employee said. “I’m not about to let it go off and just do its own thing.”

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