---
title: "Capability clock: what it means · The AI Compute Race · DRYBURGH"
source: https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/capability-clock
description: "Capability clock: The pace at which the technology's capability advances, which runs faster than the adoption clock, and against which the money was committed."
---

# Capability clock

What does “Capability clock” mean?

Capability clockThe pace at which the technology’s capability advances, which runs faster than the adoption clock, and against which the money was committed. The Scorecard uses the same words for the first of its three groups of rows, which ask when a model can do its own research. See Scorecard’s clocks. *Chapter 3.*

From *The AI Compute Race*. [Read the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#buy)

The book uses this term in a sense of its own.

Defined in [Chapter 14 — The Convergence](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes/chapter-14).

## Where the book uses it

- [Chapter 3 — The Missing Researcher](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes/chapter-3)The dated promise of an AI that does its own research, what the laboratories have published, and what the public record can and cannot yet check.

## Also discussed in

- Dated test [Chapter 2, compute moved rather than stopped](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests#2029-1)

## Related terms

- [Scorecard’s clocks](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/scorecard-s-clocks)
- [Adoption clock](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/adoption-clock)
- [Clock](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/clock)
- [Agent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/agent)
- [AGI](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/agi)
- [Alignment](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/alignment)
- [ARC-AGI-3](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/arc-agi-3)
- [Astra](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/astra)
- [Automated AI researcher](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/automated-ai-researcher)
- [Benchmark](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/benchmark)
- [Brake, the](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/brake-the)
- [Chain of thought](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/chain-of-thought)

From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.

- [Campuses](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger)
- [Tests](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests)
- [Scorecard](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard)
- [Data](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/data/releases)
- [Chapter by chapter](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/companion)
- [The record at a glance](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/observatory)
- [The machine](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/machine)
- [One campus, four futures](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/hyperion)
- [Glossary](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary)
- [People](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/people)
- [Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources)
- [Notes](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes)
- [Where the book was wrong](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/corrections)
- [Where its sources were wrong](https://dryburgh.com/corrections?book=vol1)
- [The Paper](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/paper)
- [Consent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/consent)
- [Who builds and pays](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/parties)

*The AI Compute Race: Five Races, One Machine* is a book by Lee S. Dryburgh, the first volume of THE COMPUTE ECONOMY, published by Dryburgh, an imprint of Contestra OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia; its record closes on 8 November 2026.

[About the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1)[Tell me when it is out](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#notify)