New scaling curve has half the slope: 10,000x compute for 20%-to-80%, but bigger generational jumps
tobyordoxford · x · 2026-09-14
tobyordoxford says he'll write more on a recent inference-scaling graph, highlighting two features: 1) the slope is half that of o1/o3 on AIME — needing 10,000x compute to go from 20% to 80%; 2) yet the jump between model generations is much better than in the o1→o3→GPT-5 era. Inference scaling's marginal returns worsen while per-generation baseline gains grow.
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