Amazon halts KiroRank: AI should not be just a gimmick

Amazon recently announced the closure of an internal leaderboard known as KiroRank, which had been established by employees to track the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tokens. This leaderboard encouraged some employees to use AI excessively, even when it wasn't necessarily justified by real needs. An Amazon spokesperson clarified that this informal tool, created by a group of employees, was never intended to promote the use of AI simply for the sake of using it.

The decision to shut down KiroRank was first reported by the Financial Times. It comes at a time when Amazon, like other major companies, is reevaluating its AI expenditures. The goal is to minimize "tokenmaxxing," a practice that measures productivity by the amount of AI tokens used, rather than by the actual impact of these technologies on operations.

Dave Treadwell, senior vice president at Amazon, sent a clear message to employees, emphasizing the importance of using AI to solve customer and business problems, rather than just to accumulate points on a leaderboard. "Please do not use AI just for the sake of using AI," he stated, insisting that innovation and operational efficiency should drive AI adoption.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that the KiroRank leaderboard had been "deprecated." He added that while the company tracks the use of AI tokens to measure costs, it does not encourage "tokenmaxxing." Instead, Amazon is focusing on adopting AI in a way that celebrates innovation and efficiency gains across the company.

This trend to reduce "tokenmaxxing" is also observed among other tech giants. For instance, Andrew Macdonald, COO of Uber, recently expressed doubts about the productivity gains and benefits achieved relative to increased spending on AI. These comments followed a statement from Uber's CTO, Praveen Neppalli Naga, indicating that the company had already exhausted its budget for Claude Code as early as April.

Tokens, which are units of measurement for large language models, break down words into numerical inputs and outputs, essentially forming the building blocks of chatbots and coding tools. The use of tokens has significantly increased, partly due to the rise of agentic AI, which allows agents to operate with minimal human intervention, potentially for hours.

In April, Business Insider reported that Amazon was closely monitoring its engineers' use of AI. This included tracking the number of engineers using AI each month, the frequency of integrating AI tools into workflows, and the results achieved through these deployments. This monitoring is part of a broader effort to better understand and optimize the impact of AI within the company.