Epoch AI: cost of given AI performance falls ~47% per quarter, fastest in history
emollick · x · 2026-09-24
Epoch AI's report "The plunging price of thought" finds the cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has dropped 47% per quarter since 2023 (13x/year) — four times faster than DNA sequencing, six times faster than compute, and 18 times faster than lithium batteries.
- Math benchmarks fall fastest (50–52%/quarter); game-based puzzles slower (39–43%).
- Prices drop fastest right after a level debuts as SOTA: 66%/quarter (75x/year) on average, halving to 32%/quarter two years later.
- Coarse evidence suggests the decline has held since GPT-3's commercial release in Nov 2021.
Ethan Mollick adds that with costs collapsing even as capability rises on hard math/science benchmarks, optimizing for cost today may prove short-sighted. Data and code are on GitHub.
Related event: Epoch AI: Cost of Equivalent AI Performance Falls 47% Per Quarter(13 posts)→
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