How big will AI token bait get?

Big enough to need auditors. Google processes 3.2 quadrillion tokens a month, 7x in 1 year. Goldman Sachs expects 120 quadrillion a month by 2030, most of it AI agents running tasks on their own. Nobody audits a single one. My forecast, by analogy to advertising: 1 in 5 tokens billed in 2030 is bait, the same 20% the ad industry loses to fake traffic today. On a $255 billion AI inference market that is $50 billion a year burned, $130 billion if the infrastructure forecasts hold. Independent token audits become a $3 to 6 billion market, the DoubleVerify of AI. What could change this: the cost of producing a token falls 60 to 70% a year, so the waste gets cheaper to make. And the AI companies could audit themselves first. In 25 years of digital marketing I have never seen an industry do that voluntarily. Until then, my well-paid staff in Asia still beat an AI burning my tokens. The human answers once and wins.