The fall in the compute needed to reach a fixed level of performance. For language models it halved about every eight months between 2012 and 2023, on Epoch AI’s estimate. Chapter 1.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
Where the book uses it
- Chapter 1 — The Stakes
What the race is for: the belief that a lead in AI can compound into a lasting advantage, how long such leads have actually lasted, and what a trillion dollars a year is being bet against.
Related terms
From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.
How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “Algorithmic efficiency.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/algorithmic-efficiency (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-algorithmic-efficiency-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{Algorithmic efficiency}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/algorithmic-efficiency},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}