What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending?

Corporate America was enthusiastic about artificial intelligence. Until it got the bill. Whiplash around spending on “tokens,” the units of computing power in which A.I. is sold, is hitting engineering teams and board rooms. First there was “tokenmaxxing,” as executives encouraged as much A.I. use as possible. Then there was “tokenminning,” after they rapidly burned through millions of dollars in company money. The simultaneous urgency and uncertainty is raising complex questions. What is A.I. even good for? How do you know what you’re buying, and measure the value of what it enables? How is it priced, and how will those prices change in the future? What does the spending on it displace? The high stakes and scarcity of knowledge have given rise to a new field within economics devoted to figuring out how companies buy A.I. and what value they get from it. Call it tokenomics: the study of how this limited resource is created, traded and converted into things people want.