Amid rising AI costs, Amazon has sought to discourage its employees from ‘tokenmaxxing’, a trend where workers, mostly in the tech industry, use AI tools as extensively as possible.

The direction is part of a memo that outlines Amazon’s AI usage guidelines for software engineers. Circulated internally in September, the memo was posted to the company’s website on Tuesday, October 27.

Metrics like token usage, the rate of adoption of AI tools, and code changes or reviews remain “deeply flawed” ways of measuring teams or organisations’ AI usage, Amazon said, adding that they can lead to higher costs and too much complexity.…