As companies begin to grapple with the high costs of AI usage, IBM’s HR chief predicted that employers will soon have to make decisions about when it’s worth using the technology, versus when it’s not. “AI is not free. We act like it’s free right now,” Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s CHRO, said at a New York Tech Week panel on June 5. “There’s going to be a time very shortly where organizations have to make trade-offs about, ‘Do I want people using AI for that or not, is there enough value for the cost?’ And that is coming quickly,” she said. LaMoreaux’s comments come after big tech firms like Amazon and Meta stopped tracking internal AI usage amid concerns that “toxenmaxxing” was running up their bills. IBM is heavily invested in AI, with plans to put $150 billion toward developing this technology, as well as quantum computing. AI has already transformed functions like HR, LaMoreaux told HR Brew in February, and prompted the company to rethink how it approaches upskilling and performance management. But LaMoreaux differentiated between embedding AI into the workflow to drive business outcomes and using it at the individual employee level. For more on how LaMoreaux is thinking about AI, keep reading here.—CV | 
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