Amazon has shut down an internal leaderboard that ranked staff by their use of AI tools, after employees reportedly found ways to game the system.
As reported by 404 Media, the internal dashboard tracked AI tool use across the company. Amazon said the initiative had achieved its goal of encouraging awareness and adoption of AI tools, but employees told the publication the leaderboard was easy to manipulate and encouraged wasteful use.
What was Amazon’s AI leaderboard?
The dashboard, known internally as KiroRank, ranked employees based on their use of Amazon’s AI coding tool Kiro.
It was connected to PhoneTool, Amazon’s internal company directory. Employees could receive PhoneTool awards, which function like internal badges displayed alongside a staff member’s name.
Amazon’s internal announcement said the goal of the personal Kiro dashboard and PhoneTool awards was to “create awareness about what AI can do to help accelerate development work”.
The company said the project had reached its goals after “so many people” inside the organisation became familiar with AI tools.
Employees reportedly gamed the system
Emanuel Maiberg, reporter at 404 Media, reported that several Amazon employees believed the leaderboard had created the wrong incentives.
Some employees told the publication they deliberately cheated to climb the rankings. One employee said they did so after being told in a performance review they were not using AI enough at work.
Employees described methods that effectively boosted usage without producing meaningful work. 404 Media said it did not publish the exact details to protect the anonymity of the staff involved.
One employee said the leaderboard encouraged staff to focus on volume rather than efficiency, particularly around token use. In AI systems, tokens are the units of text processed by a model and can contribute to usage costs.
Amazon says the dashboard was not formal
An Amazon spokesperson told 404 Media that KiroRank “was never intended to promote the use of AI for usage’s sake”.
“One of the internal dashboards, called KiroRank, was recently created by a group of employees who wanted to drive awareness for how AI can accelerate work, and was never intended to promote the use of AI for usage’s sake,” the spokesperson said.
“The beta dashboard was not a formal or approved tool, and has since been deprecated. We’re focused on AI adoption and sharing best practices to celebrate innovation and operational efficiency gains across the company, and we’re proud of the way our teams are embracing this technology.”
Amazon also said it does not mandate teams to use AI tools or track their usage. However, the company said it does measure token utilisation to understand cost and efficiency patterns.