'Human tokens' math: human thinking costs 10,000x more than Astra at $500k per million tokens
flngr · x · 2026-11-08
A widely shared workplace anecdote introduces the term "human tokens" — "let's spend some human tokens on this." A thinking human writes 1,000 tokens per hour, so one million tokens equals 1,000 hours; at $50/hour that's $500,000 per million output tokens. Astra costs $50 per million output tokens — making human thinking exactly 10,000x more expensive than Astra's.
More from AGI Musings
- Joseph Jacks: nearly all of Richard Sutton's profound ideas have been misread — JosephJacks_ · 2026-11-08
- JPMorgan CISO urges firms to abstract services from the open internet in the agent era — yenkel · 2026-11-08
- Anders Sandberg: ASI timeline has shrunk from decades to 10+ years — anderssandberg · 2026-11-08
- Anders Sandberg: by the time an AI research-speed doubling is confirmed, takeoff may be near — anderssandberg · 2026-11-08
- cocktailpeanut: last advantage of high IQ is realizing IQ itself is becoming a commodity — cocktailpeanut · 2026-11-08
- Beff Jezos: Emotionally Unstable Humans Are More Dangerous Than Superintelligence — beffjezos · 2026-11-08