Epoch AI chart: AI cost falling ~13x a year, faster than any tech in history
sebkrier · x · 2026-11-11
- A shared Epoch AI chart argues the price of "artificial thought" may have fallen faster than any transformative technology in history: AI (2021–26) dropped 47% per quarter (13x/year), a far steeper curve than electricity (1892–1973), lithium batteries (1991–2024), DNA sequencing (2001–22), or compute (1940–2001).
- The rate is validated by Appenzeller (2024): per-token prices for models above a capability threshold fell 10x/year in 2021–24.
- A quoted reply adds a dimension often excluded from the equation: latency. Running a frontier model with trillions of weights on edge devices remains hard, even with pauses cut for a 10x speedup.
Related event: AI Inference Costs Drop 13x Per Year, Outpacing Past Tech Revolutions(2 posts)→
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