It’s not the first time leaderboards have driven the wrong behaviour and it’s unlikely to be the last!
Consumption based AI pricing may make sense when usage is tied to human workflows. But it becomes a very different proposition when autonomous agents can run continuously, generating tokens without necessarily generating value. That is the real strategic lesson here.
As AI adoption moves from experimentation to scaled value creation, the question is no longer:
“Are employees using AI?”
It is:
“Where is AI changing the cost curve, speed curve, quality curve, or innovation curve?”
Needless to say, the winners will not be the organisations with the highest AI usage. They will be the ones with the clearest link between AI activity and measurable business outcomes.