Amazon employees are reportedly using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show higher adoption of the technology.
The company recently began rolling out an in-house product called MeshClaw, which allows staff to create AI agents that can connect with workplace software and complete tasks on their behalf, according to the Financial Times.
However, some employees told the publication that colleagues were using the tool to generate unnecessary AI activity in order to increase their token consumption. Tokens are the units of data processed by AI models.
The reported behaviour comes after Amazon introduced targets for more than 80 per cent of developers to use AI each week. The business has also tracked internal AI usage through leader boards showing token consumption.
While Amazon has told staff that AI usage statistics will not be used in performance evaluations, several employees told the FT they believed managers were monitoring the data.
One employee said there was “so much pressure” to use the tools, while another said tracking usage had created “perverse incentives”.
The term “tokenmaxxing” has emerged in Silicon Valley to describe employees artificially inflating their AI usage metrics, with Meta staff also said to have engaged in similar behaviour.
Amazon’s MeshClaw tool can reportedly initiate code deployments, triage emails and interact with workplace applications such as Slack.
The company said the product enabled “thousands of Amazonians to automate repetitive tasks each day”, describing it as one example of how it is “empowering teams” to experiment with and adopt AI tools.
The group added that it remained committed to the “safe, secure and responsible” development and deployment of generative AI.
However, some Amazon employees reportedly raised concerns about the security implications of giving AI agents permission to act on a user’s behalf, warning that the software could make errors or take unintended actions.
The push comes as major technology companies increase pressure on staff to adopt generative AI tools, as they look to prove the value of heavy investment in AI infrastructure and embed the technology into everyday workflows.
Amazon is expected to spend heavily on capital expenditure this year, with much of that investment directed towards AI and data centre infrastructure.
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