Agents burning 5x the tokens humans.
But here's the trap: token burn ≠ value creation.
A poorly configured agent can burn millions of tokens spinning in a loop, generating spam, or hallucinating API calls. More tokens don't mean better outcomes, just more activity.
The real shift isn't just that agents are doing the work. It's that we need accountability for that work.
If your agent is burning 5x the compute, it better be:
- Auditing its own code before shipping
- Publishing a scorecard of its decisions
- Clearing actual operational bottlenecks
Compute is getting cheaper. Trust is getting more expensive.
Build for the latter.