Move over, Monopoly money, poker chips, Bitcoins and NFTs. HR, meet AI tokens.

First, LMGTFY: AI tokens are units vendors use to represent work being processed by large language models (LLMs).

“In the AI context, it is a unit of data,” Julia Dhar, managing director and partner at the Boston Consulting Group, said. “You can think about it like a brick in the wall; you could think about it like one dollar; you can, maybe, think about it like an atom that allows a generative AI model to both decompose and then recompose language when, for example, a human submits a query to a large language model.”

A token can represent a single word, a group of letters, a punctuation mark, but—most importantly—each token represents a bit of work and energy needed by the LLM. Understanding how tokens work, how much are available for use, and what a token translates to in output, have suddenly become matters for HR and people teams to consider.

For more on what HR needs to know about AI tokens, keep reading here.—AD

Amazon last week reminded employees to focus their AI use on solving problems and innovation, as the tech behemoth joins other businesses in grappling with “tokenmaxxing” and big AI invoices.

“Please don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI…Use AI to help you solve customer problems, to help you solve business problems, to innovate,” Amazon SVP Dave Treadwell told staff, according to Business Insider.

The note came as Amazon axed an internal leaderboard platform that employees used to track their AI token use, a rough measure of prowess in an AI-powered era, even as many caution against conflating high usage with high output. Some employees may look to tokenmaxxing to show employers their AI buy-in—regardless if increased token spend actually equates to better outputs and more AI knowledge.

The Amazon leaderboard was one of several that emerged during an early tokenmaxxing wave, during which employees competed for top slots, indicating to employers high AI adoption and use. But HR and business leaders are facing an all too familiar productivity challenge: leveraging metrics that encourage the wrong behavior.

For more on how HR can contend with tokenmaxxing and growing AI costs, keep reading here.—AD

A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee is illegal, blocking the policy in its entirety.

In a ruling issued on June 8, Leo Sorokin, a federal judge in Massachusetts, sided with 20 Democratic state attorneys general who sued the administration over the fee. Last September, the administration said in a proclamation that it would impose a $100,000 fee on any new H-1B visa petitions, creating a financial hurdle for employers who rely on the H-1B program to recruit and hire talent.

Sorokin ruled that the $100,000 fee is a tax that did not receive approval from Congress, and is thus illegal.

The Trump administration argues the president had the authority to restrict immigration by implementing this fee, and plans to appeal the decision.

For more on what the decision could mean for HR, keep reading here.—CV

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