“AI Scaling vs Human Scaling” by Toby_Ord

<p> Audio note: this post contains a lot of mathematical notation. We narrate the simpler formulas and flag the complex ones, so you may want the original text to hand. </p> <p> Do AI models scale as well with more tokens as humans do with more time?</p><p> That is, does an AI get the same benefit from 10x the number of available tokens as a human does from 10x the amount of time to do the task? Or might the AI require a larger scale-up of tokens (such as 20x or 100x) to match the performance improvement when scaling up the time available to a human by 10x?</p><p> People often think of giving AIs more tokens to complete a task as akin to giving a human worker more time — especially when those tokens are used to extend the AI's sequential chain of thought or tool use. It's a useful analogy, but it isn’t clear whether the AI systems are as efficient as the humans are at turning these extra resources into superior performance.</p><p> We often lean on this analogy when trying to understand AI's current capabilities and how they might change. For example, we might think of scaling up [...]</p> <p>---</p>

<p><b>First published:</b><br/>

October 9th, 2026 </p>

<p><b>Source:</b><br/>

<a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g6sdhN39so8rWBuYk/ai-scaling-vs-human-scaling?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g6sdhN39so8rWBuYk/ai-scaling-vs-human-scaling</a> </p>

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<p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p>

<p>---</p><div style="max-width: 100%";><p><strong>Images from the article:</strong></p><a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/g6sdhN39so8rWBuYk/qhoxvtz2tvip9d7bbv06" target="_blank"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/g6sdhN39so8rWBuYk/qhoxvtz2tvip9d7bbv06" alt="Line graph titled "Best Observed Score@k by Time Budget (95% CI)" comparing AI models and humans." style="max-width: 100%;" /></a><hr style="margin-top: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px;" /><a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/g6sdhN39so8rWBuYk/sg6jbb67xzdnugaluzxe" target="_blank"><img sr