Put Sam Altman's rule through your numbers

One rule JMM has located in a dated source, rebuilt as a working calculator, and taken a position on.

Sources located: Sam Altman (personal blog)
Source years: 2025
JMM verdicts: depends on you

Portrait: Office of the Prime Minister of Japan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Self-hosted by JMM.

AI compute capability model

How much more compute does the same budget buy each year?

depends on you The cost curve is real and the inference people draw from it is not. Sam Altman (personal blog), 2025Open model

Not every rule here survives its own arithmetic

JMM does not grade this rule as a set. The verdict on ai compute capability model is where the position turns critical: The cost curve is real and the inference people draw from it is not.

Each page separates three things people usually run together: what the source states, what JMM's model adds to make it computable, and where the rule itself breaks. The last one is not the calculator's limitations list. It is the failure of the idea, which is the part the person who published the rule has no reason to write down.