That's how arms races work though. Everyone spends a ton of money to end up no further ahead compared to their rivals and peers.

"The share price will tank if we're not seen as AI-forward" is a legitimate fear for many CEOs. It's the only logical explanation for tokenmaxxing and other behavior that only makes sense from a game theoretical perspective.

Tokenmaxxing was the management buying the marketing that AGI was here and if employees would only use AI they would herald their own replacement?

If that were true then management could've spent some time coming up with better metrics than "tokens burned". They could just halve deadlines for every project, as an extreme example.

I thought tokenmaxxing was their proxy for this: more tokens burnt = more productivity = more projects completed.

You seem to assume competence here?

big if true

Clearly true though. “Not reveryone” is doing it. Most of the bubbly(?) trillions are.

In other words, those who are doing it are winning and those who are not doing it are losing.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -WOPR

I think the more spelled out version of this is "our existing debt is tied to our equity in some way so we have to maintain our unicorn valuation, and the unicorns are building AI infrastructure".

If they admit the current pace is unsustainable, they die anyway. Might as well keep building and praying for a hail Mary.