But why should I care? If my metrics are speed and cost? How many tokens it takes as a user is arbitrary to some extent.

If speed is a metric for you, tokens required to solve a problem affects that metric.

All else being equal passing triple the amount of tokens through a model to solve the same problem makes it slower.

Doesn’t mean this model is bad, and it has to be considered how cheap it is, but it’s a factor.

Still, seems useless to measure tokens when you can measure speed.