Days after Meta shut down The “tokenmaxxing” internal dashboard after the AI leaderboard news leaked to the pressLinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman backed the idea recently Silicon Valley by storm.
An AI token is a small piece of data that an artificial intelligence model processes when trying to understand a prompt and generate a response. It is also the unit used to measure AI usage and determine the cost of AI services.
As a result, many companies have begun to internally track which employees use the most tokens as a proxy for understanding those who embrace AI tools most readily. They call this concept “tokenmaxxing” – “maxxing” is Gen Z lingo for optimizing something, as you may have heard in other slang like “lookmaxxing” or “sleepmaxxing”.
However, engineers at technology companies have disputed whether or not this metric is a viable measure of workplace productivity, as it is similar to ranking people based on who spends more money from others.
Hoffman, in an interview broadcast at the Semafor Global Economy summit this week, offered his advice for companies adopting artificial intelligence, saying he had a positive view of the practice. While he didn’t refer to the metric in Gen Z-speak, he expressed that tracking discretionary employee spending was a good idea.
“You have to get people in all different kinds of functions engaged and experimenting [with AI],” Hoffman said at the event. “Here’s one of the things that’s a good dashboard to look at — it’s not that it’s a perfect example of productivity, but … how much symbolic use are people actually using as they’re doing it?”
He went on to explain that some people may be using multiple tokens, but in more random or exploratory ways, so you want to combine tracking the practice of “tokenmaxxing” with understanding what people are using their tokens for.
“Some of these will be experiments that fail—that’s fine. But it’s in this loop, and you want a wide variety of people to use it meaningfully, collectively, and simultaneously,” Hoffman added.
Hoffman shared other advice for companies trying to figure out their AI strategies, suggesting that AI should be integrated throughout the organization. He also suggested regular check-ins to share what’s working with others.
“We should have, essentially, a weekly check-in. We don’t have to be all, all the time with each other—but a group check-in about, ‘what did we try to do new this week, to use AI for both personal and team and corporate productivity, and what did we learn?’ Because what you’re going to find, some of the things are really amazing,” Hoffman said.
