Legora CTO Criticizes AI Token Leaderboards, Recommends Hack Days to Measure Real Productivity Gains

Jacob Lauritzen, chief technology officer of the legal AI startup Legora, said companies should stop tying employee reviews to AI token counts because the practice leads workers to consume tokens simply to appear productive. Lauritzen spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast released on Saturday.

" Instead, Lauritzen recommended organizing hack days or internal demos where employees can demonstrate the tools they built and the efficiency gains they achieved.

"Reward them for being effective and efficient and having more output, not for necessarily using AI," he said. Lauritzen joined Legora in 2024. He noted that fast-growing companies face high opportunity costs if they avoid experimenting with AI, adding that spending "a ton of tokens to learn if it maybe gives us 20% efficiency" can still be justified.

His remarks come as several technology companies reassess unlimited AI access. Uber limited all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spend per AI tool after the company exceeded its AI budget earlier this year, Business Insider reported. Last month the Financial Times reported that Amazon closed an internal dashboard that tracked employee AI usage after some staff performed tasks solely to improve their standing on the leaderboard.

Andrew Feldman, chief executive of Cerebras Systems, addressed the same issue at a Bloomberg conference last week. He called the policy of granting employees unlimited tokens "boneheaded from the get-go" and advised using lower-cost open-source models for routine tasks. "You don't need a Ferrari to go to the grocery store, right?

Use a lower-cost open source model," Feldman said.