More and more AI leaders seem to be saying that intelligence is becoming cheaper at an exponential rate.
Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, has said that intelligence is becoming cheaper by 10x every year. Weil shared a striking observation about this rapidly decreasing cost of artificial intelligence, hinting at a future where access to advanced AI becomes remarkably affordable. His comments reflect a broader trend in the tech industry, where the cost of computing power and AI model development is falling dramatically.
“If you look at a constant level of intelligence,” Weil explained, “and you look at how much that costs, it’s coming down by something like 10x a year.” This drastic reduction, he pointed out, stems from several converging factors. “The models are getting smarter; we’re able to distill smaller models. You know, the same level of intelligence that previously required a much bigger model… inference is getting cheaper; GPUs are getting faster.”
He illustrated this point with a comparison to GPT-3, the large language model that preceded the current generation. “If you go back to like two years ago, GPT-3, when we launched in the API… if we just swapped it out for you and [gave you] GPT-4… I mean, our standards have just come a long way. At the time, GPT-3 was mind-blowing. It cost 100x what GPT-4 costs today, and GPT-4 is a much smarter model. And that was two years ago.”
Weil drew a parallel to Moore’s Law, which predicted the doubling of transistors on a chip every 18 months. “Moore’s law was [about the] number of transistors on a chip every 18 months,” he remarked. “This is intelligence getting 10x cheaper every year. It’s a much deeper exponential.” He emphasized OpenAI’s commitment to passing these cost savings on to developers. “Whenever we have an opportunity to bring down the cost of our products, we do so.” He highlighted the regularity with which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman encourages cost reductions, saying, “The number of times Sam pings me… it’s just like, ‘Can we cut the cost of this API in half?’ It’s like, it’s every week, it’s multiple times a week.”
Weil’s comments point to a future where access to powerful AI tools is no longer a luxury but a commodity. This aligns with predictions made by other tech leaders, like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who said last year that artificial intelligence will become like air and be too cheap to meter.
The implications of this trend are profound. As AI becomes cheaper and more accessible, it is poised to transform numerous industries. From healthcare and education to manufacturing and entertainment, the potential applications are vast. A future where cutting-edge AI is readily available to everyone, not just large corporations, could unlock a wave of innovation and reshape the technological landscape as we know it.