Eagerness about artificial intelligence has led to a competitive push at tech companies to use as much AI as possible in a trend called tokenmaxxing. Employers are happily spending thousands to keep up with output, but whether the practice is sustainable is up for debate.

What is it?
At the core of the AI workplace trend are tokens. They represent small bits of text that AI models process during a prompt, and their use helps track AI usage and calculate costs. AI companies “typically charge a monthly subscription for a fixed allotment of tokens,” with additional usage billed separately or available in higher-tier plans, said Built In.

To achieve tokenmaxxing, employees rack up tokens by deploying multiple agentic AI models on separate projects simultaneously or by running longer prompts. Token budgets are “becoming another form of employee compensation, alongside stock options and yearly bonuses,” said Built In. And while some workers go through millions of tokens a week, employers are “happily footing the bill.”

Is it worth it?
The popularity of tokenmaxxing “reflects a desire to incentivize AI usage” and presents the assumption that tokens are the “base unit for AI usage,” meaning “greater consumption indicates higher value of AI,” said Jim Rowan, the U.S. head of AI at Deloitte Consulting LLP, to Forbes. While well-intentioned, there are “risks of turning tokens into a ‘vanity metric.’”

Still, some proponents of the competitive practice push back against such rhetoric. “We all should be tokenmaxxing,” said Sonya Huang, a partner at Sequoia Capital, to The Wall Street Journal. 

It’s true that the “cost of training AI models is falling, making AI tokens more affordable,” but people have started using “more tokens in their day-to-day tasks,” said Tom’s Hardware (a sister site of The Week). Though AI is “indeed a useful tool,” some companies are “using it to replace people in a bid to cut labor costs.” If the number of tokens needed to accomplish tasks “outpaces the speed at which these tokens become cheaper, then that move might just backfire.”

Suicides, in particular, have exploded at an “alarming” rate, said The Associated Press. And with tens of thousands of migrants still concentrated in DHS camps across the country, mortality rates have become a regular feature of the agency’s current tenure.

‘Something is going profoundly wrong’
The rise in deaths at DHS facilities comes as “detention numbers have skyrocketed” during the Trump administration, said NPR. Trump officials “denied there has been a spike” in deaths to the outlet and “attributed the increase to the large number of people in detention” overall. The increase in deaths is because “we do have the highest amount in detention that ICE has ever had since its inception in 2003,” said outgoing ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons at a congressional budget hearing in April.

Last year, “more than 1,000 emergency requests” to 911 were made from multiple detention centers around the country, 28 of which were prompted by “serious incidents of self-harm,” said NBC News. “Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective,” said epidemiologist Dr. Sanjay Basu, the co-author of a new study on mortality and suicide rates among ICE detainees, to NPR. 

‘Preventable’ deaths
More detainees have died in DHS custody last year than in any year in at least two decades, with 2026 “on track to be even higher,” said CNN. But many of the past year’s deaths “appear to have been preventable.” In “more than a dozen cases,” the “deadly outcomes” stemmed in part from “substandard treatment by at-times understaffed medical teams dealing with escalating detainee populations.”

ICE has “repeatedly asserted” that all detainees are screened for “medical, dental and mental health conditions” within 12 hours of arrival, said the AP. But reviews of ICE’s own inspection reports and jail records show “three of the nine facilities where ICE detainees died by suicide have struggled to meet that standard.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket blows up during a test in Florida. Jeff Bezos’ company hopes to use the megarocket to launch NASA landers to the moon. “All personnel are accounted for and safe,” he said on X, but it has been a “very rough day.”
NASA/Reuters

The year is nearly half over, and yes, there’s another recent season’s worth of new podcasts to tap into. Spring featured several new releases and the return of some popular shows. These are a few of the best springtime podcasts to catch up on as we leave the season behind.

Frozen Files (Independent)
True crime podcasts remain a popular podcast genre, with new ones cropping up often. Madison McGhee’s Frozen Files takes on unsolved crimes, with a weekly deep dive into overlooked cold cases. The host doesn’t just “examine the facts behind failed investigations,” said Podcast Review. She questions “why cases remain cold and whether systems have failed these victims.” (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

We Regret to Inform You: The Rejection Podcast (Apostrophe Podcast Network)
If you are looking for tools to fight imposter syndrome, this podcast is here to assist. For those “plagued with people-pleasing tendencies” or “afraid to start a creative project due to crippling perfectionism,” We Reject to Inform You delivers lessons about rejection from some of the greatest writers, actors and entrepreneurs, said Podcast Review. (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

Raven (Drum and Monkey Media)
The arts and true crime collide in this narrative podcast from host Gavin Whitehead. The series is “part character study, part investigation” and tells the “tale of Raven Chanticleer, the founder and owner of the African American Wax Museum in Harlem,” said The Guardian. The show’s focus “flits between Chanticleer’s wild life story” and the “whereabouts of the waxworks” that “disappeared after his death in 2002.” (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)