Amazon killed its AI leaderboard for 1 reason: tokenmaxxing
amazon shut down its internal 'kiro' ai usage leaderboard after employees gamed the system with wasteful prompts to please management, signaling a crackdown on 'tokenmaxxing' culture.
amazon has shut down an internal ai leaderboard that ranked developers by their usage of tools like the 'kiro' coding assistant and 'phonetool'. management claims the program ended because it successfully raised awareness, but multiple employees report the system was gamed to satisfy bosses who demanded higher ai usage. staff ran scripts to generate meaningless prompts—known as 'tokenmaxxing'—to artificially inflate their stats without improving productivity. an amazon spokesperson clarified the dashboard was an unapproved beta, though the company continues to measure overall token utilization.