Toby Ord: task horizon likely follows a power law in RL compute, not linear

tobyordoxford · x · 2026-11-14

In a discussion with Ramez, Ben Todd and others, Oxford researcher Toby Ord argues that even if ECI is logarithmic in RL compute and horizon is exponential in ECI, the two effects don't automatically cancel back to linear — it depends on the constants. In general, task horizon can be a power law of RL compute.

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