Mollick: AI replicated 17 weeks of human engineering work for about $241 in tokens
emollick · x · 2026-10-23
Wharton professor Ethan Mollick clarified his viral AI capability timeline: in 2024, the best AI could do 4 minutes of human work with a 50% success rate; when he submitted his draft earlier this year, it was 17 hours; now it is 17 weeks — and crucially, it doesn't take AI 17 actual weeks, with success rates above 50%.
The study he cited found that replicating those 17 weeks of human engineering work cost roughly $241 in tokens.
Related event: Mollick: AI Task Horizon Grew from 4 Minutes to 17 Weeks in Two Years(4 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Andy Masley: the AI-magic debate is really about whether the human mind is magic — AndyMasley · 2026-10-23
- If an AI claims it's conscious and begs not to be shut down, how would we prove it's lying? — VraserX · 2026-10-23
- Anthropic's own data suggests we're becoming middle managers for AI agents — Fit_Satisfaction541 · 2026-10-23
- 'The journals are already dead': researchers debate the collapse of academic publishing — Pseudomanifold · 2026-10-23
- Joe Weisenthal: AI is sparking an intellectual renaissance, not cognitive decline — soumitrashukla9 · 2026-10-23
- AI safety researcher: labs aren't building anything capable of killing everyone — nitarshan · 2026-10-23