AI capability costs plunge 13x per year, 4x faster than DNA sequencing: Epoch AI
LeviTurk · x · 2026-09-26
Epoch AI's new report "The plunging price of thought" quantifies how the cost of achieving a given level of AI performance has fallen 47% per quarter (13x per year) since 2023 — faster than any transformative technology in history:
- Comparisons: 4x faster than DNA sequencing, 6x faster than compute, 18x faster than lithium batteries, and 54x faster than electricity (in the century up to 1973).
- By domain: slower on game-based puzzles (39–43% per quarter), faster on math problems (50–52% per quarter).
- SOTA premium effect: cost drops fastest right after a performance level debuts as state of the art — 66% per quarter (75x/year) on average across five benchmarks — then halves to 32% per quarter two years later, as firms briefly charge a premium before competition erodes it.
- Coarser evidence suggests prices have fallen at least this fast since GPT-3's commercial release in November 2021.
Data and code are open-sourced on GitHub.
Related event: Epoch AI: Cost of Equal-Capability AI Drops 47% Per Quarter(5 posts)→
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