Earlier this year two trends were woven together to coin an unlikely new term. In March, Jensen Huang said he would be alarmed if an Nvidia engineer didn’t consume at least half their salaries worth of tokens in a year. This sent shudders through people on both sides of the AI hype. AI maximalists, having proudly shelled out $200 a month to unleash the hounds now felt hopelessly behind. CFOs balked at the idea of a 50% increase to their R&D budget when costs were supposed to be going way down.
Around the same time, the manosphere’s obsession with male beauty made looksmaxxing the word of the day.
Thus, “tokenmaxxing” was born — and it’s become the AI skeptic’s shorthand for “I told you so.” The party line: productivity gains aren’t showing up in the macro numbers, yet companies are burning millions on AI spend. Business Insider reported that Uber blew through its entire annual AI budget in ju…
