Amazon tells employees to stop tokenmaxxing

Amazon published an internal memo calling tokenmaxxing—pushing employees to use AI as much as possible—"deeply flawed" and disconnected from results. The company says it will reward developers who find ways to remove AI from workflows where it doesn't help.

• Amazon called tokenmaxxing a "deeply flawed" practice
• Employees will be rewarded for removing unhelpful AI
• Amazon shut down its internal AI usage leaderboard in May
• Uber engineers reportedly burned a year's AI budget on Claude Code