Tech Firms Grade Workers by How Fast They Burn Through AI Tokens

NYT columnist Kevin Roose reports that employees at Meta and OpenAI are being evaluated on how quickly they burn through AI tokens, with managers rewarding heavy AI usage and chastening those who use AI less. The trend, tied to agentic AI tools like OpenClaw and Claude Code, has led to staggering costs (one OpenAI engineer reportedly used 210 billion tokens) and high-profile claims like GPT-5.4 processing 5 trillion tokens per day. Critics say token-based metrics distort incentives and budgets and may incentivize unnecessary AI use.