Toby Ord: a small share of impossible tasks would crush the 80% time horizon
tobyordoxford · x · 2026-11-09
Toby Ord responds to Halperin's summary with a correction and a sharper point: with '15% of tasks being like that' (tasks agents simply can't do), an 80% horizon of 15 minutes remains possible. He further notes that if 25% of tasks were impossible, it would shorten the 80% horizon far more than the 50% one — a small tail of un-doable tasks dominates high-reliability measurements.
Related event: Toby Ord Questions METR Time-Horizon Findings(2 posts)→
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