Dwarkesh Patel quote, Jul 29, 2026

Host, Dwarkesh Podcast · Jul 29, 2026 · Essay, Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years

I wish we didn’t live in a world with such strong economies of scale of intelligence (because I’m worried about power concentration).

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Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

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Jul 29, 2026	I want to emphasize the key conclusion here: as AI models become smarter, they’ll better monetize the same amount of compute. If a true human-level software engineer that could run on an H100 equivalent, at current market rates for software engineers, that H100 should rent for over $250k a year.Jul 29, 2026· Essay	EssayWhy compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years	Source
Jul 29, 2026	If by 2028 we’ve automated software engineering and the price of compute is 15x higher than it is right now, then it’s going to be much more difficult for you, with no revenue, to compete for compute against the frontier labs.Jul 29, 2026· Essay	EssayWhy compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years	Source
Jul 29, 2026	If you’re spending most of your compute on inference, you’re kind of declaring that AI progress has stalled, because it’s not worth investing more in training, and your business is basically that of a cloud provider.Jul 29, 2026· Essay	EssayWhy compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years	Source
Jun 19, 2026	I think the reason it is relatively easy for open source and previous laggards to catch up to within months of the frontier is that data is the real driver of progress.Jun 19, 2026· Essay	EssayThe data black hole at the center of AI	Source
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May 16, 2026	But in the real world, power is more the product of having the authority and trust to get lots of people to collaborate with you, rather than some galaxy brain scheming capability.May 16, 2026· Essay	EssayThe mistake of conflating intelligence and power	Source
May 16, 2026	I’m simply pointing out that the way AI systems are currently becoming smarter (by getting trained to be to be really good at specific economically valuable tasks like coding) is not that strongly correlated with power.May 16, 2026· Essay	EssayThe mistake of conflating intelligence and power	Source

Date	Quote	Context	Source
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Sep 23, 2026	This trains the AIs to be focused on task success, which naturally risks including things like reward-hacking, cheating, and single-minded pursuit of stated goals at the expense of ethical injunctions.Scott AlexanderSep 23, 2026· Post	PostMysteries Of AI Generalization	Source
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Sep 23, 2026	The companies building the most powerful AI systems admit their products pose catastrophic risks, yet offer no convincing technical solutions.Yoshua BengioSep 23, 2026· Keynote	KeynoteSpeech at the UN Security Council	Source
Sep 23, 2026	The race is not a law of nature: it is the product of choices, choices made by the companies themselves.Yoshua BengioSep 23, 2026· Keynote	KeynoteSpeech at the UN Security Council	Source

About this quote

Said by: Dwarkesh Patel, Host, Dwarkesh Podcast
Where: Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years
Topics: Economics, Safety
Source: dwarkesh.com/p/why-compute-might-get-10x-more-expensive

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