Toby Ord Questions AECI Acceleration Paper: Training Compute Not Ruled Out

tobyordoxford · x · 2026-11-07

Oxford philosopher Toby Ord discusses a paper claiming acceleration in AI research progress (measured in AECI). The thread notes the authors confidently exclude training-compute acceleration as the cause, but the evidence behind that conclusion is redacted, leaving readers to decide how much to defer. Ord says he couldn't interpret one claim, and his best guess is a large new pre-train boosting results by 5 AECI plus a 1.4x speed improvement—an explanation he believes the paper does not actually rule out.

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