To rein in wanton AI spending, we need AI ‘nutrition labels’

Over the past year, tech-forward companies have gorged themselves on AI , gobbling up more and more tokens, the base unit of AI use. Google alone now processes more than 3.2 quadrillion tokens a month, roughly seven times what it handled a year earlier. Meanwhile, Uber burned through its entire artificial intelligence budget for 2026 by April— four months into the year.