Park Chul-wan
The author is a professor of Department of Smart Automotive Engineering and Future Mobility Master’s Program at Seojeong University.
The atmosphere at Silicon Valley house parties is changing. Developers no longer keep checking social media feeds or stock prices. Instead, many find themselves constantly monitoring the status of AI agents running in the background. Venture capitalist Nikunj Kothari has called this phenomenon “token anxiety.” A token is the basic unit of computation used by artificial intelligence. As AI systems work around the clock, humans increasingly worry about what those systems are doing.
A staff member explains how to build and run Claw Agents at the Computex Taipei exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, June 3. [AP/YONHAP]
Tokens also carry a financial cost. The more tokens an AI system consumes, the higher the bill. Yet the deeper issue is not computing expenses themselves but the cost of maintaining human control over increasingly autonomous systems.
