The main usage metric for artificial intelligence, called tokens, looks explosive on paper, but it may be significantly overstated.
Bosses Are Blowing More Money on AI Agents Than It'd Cost Them to Just Pay Human Workers
Some organizings are finding themselves spending more on AI token fees than they do paying human salaries.
What AI coding costs you | Tom Wojcik
What's the effect of the prolonged AI usage among coders and is it tracked correctly, if it all?
Using AI to click around on a website burns 45x as many tokens as just using APIs
For AI agents, seeing is expensive
AI Is a Waste of Time
The newest AI tools are accelerating basic research and scaring the general public. But many people are simply using them as toys.
Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
Measuring Usage in the Age of AI - Research Information
Tasha Mellins-Cohen outlines COUNTER Metrics' new guidance for usage metrics associated with generative and agentic AI
AIs are not people
Humans and other fleshy life-forms are valuable in ways that artificial intelligence never can be.
"AI" is Automated Inequality
Tech bros still dominate the discussions about so-called "AI" with false claims. Even most "AI"-critical researchers spend much of their time meticulously debunking (always only a subset of) claims, leaving vast areas of the economic consequences of "AI" unexplored. (Even the "AI"-evangelist Economi
tokens are getting more expensive
"language models will get cheaper by 10x" will not save ai subscriptions from the short squeeze
AI can cost more than human workers now
When AI labs raise prices, big spending on AI could shift from a flex to a liability.
The Large Gender Gap in Who Uses AI
A recent study finds that AI usage tilts heavily toward men. Part of the reason: Women worried they might be penalized for using AI.
Pluralistic: Google’s AI pricing plan (21 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Google is spending a lot on AI, but what's not clear is how Google will make a lot from AI. Or, you know, even break even. Given, you know, that businesses are seeing zero return from AI:
When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing
Are people using AI, or is the organization learning from it? What changed because we spent those tokens? And who moves discoveries from individuals to teams to organizational capabilities?
Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”
Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use.
