The article also points out that this is straight up illegal, but these guys are above the law so fuck us normal people ig:

The idea is that instead of getting paid dollars to work for an AI company … you get paid in AI tokens. The units that the AI vendor charges API access in. You have to use these tokens in your job, too.

This is not in any way a “new” idea. It’s company scrip — a company’s own made-up money that you can only spend in the company store. Company scrip was always just a scam, and paying workers in company scrip has been illegal in the US since 1938. But you know these guys don’t care.