Buried footnote reveals exponent 0.454: ~100x compute buys only 10x longer AI task horizons
tobyordoxford · x · 2026-11-09
Toby Ord points out that an exponent relating AI task time horizons to compute is buried in a footnote: 0.454. Holding compute/data mix constant and assuming the effect is compute-driven, you need roughly 100x the compute to get 10x the time horizon — an apparent upper bound on what to expect. He notes estimating this exponent would make a great paper on its own.
More from Infra
- AI chip design demo: one prompt for a 64-bit RISC-V processor under 3W TDP — satnam6502 · 2026-11-09
- Appwrite launches MCP1: one URL for every MCP server your team uses — eldadfux · 2026-11-09
- Saudi's HUMAIN and National Infrastructure Fund line up up to SAR 2.5B for AI infrastructure — HUMAIN · 2026-11-09
- Local models' broken chat templates silently broke agent clients — here's the fix — viest_me · 2026-11-09
- 48% speedup: optimized llama.cpp settings for Qwen3.8-Flash-Next on Ryzen AI Max+ 395 — Prudence-0 · 2026-11-09
- Day 309/365 of GPU Programming: Optimizing LLaMA2-7B on Edge with SIMD and Multithreading — NandoDF · 2026-11-09