OpenAI's 3x AI productivity gain might just be a machine that never sleeps

Tom Tunguz 分析 OpenAI 的 3x AI 生产力增益是否只是机器不睡觉

OpenAI researchers now supervise 3.14 agent-workdays per 8-hour human shift. Median daily inference spend jumped from $14 in March to $600 by August, with the 90th percentile burning $7,000/day. Tom Tunguz argues this 3x gain is a 24-hour machine shift, not smarter humans. Over half of 4–8 hour tasks still need human intervention, turning engineers into factory-floor troubleshooters. The post cites OpenAI's own research blog; no specific model names are disclosed.

Why it matters: Tunguz uses OpenAI's internal data to deconstruct the '3x productivity' claim, attributing gains to agents running 24/7 rather than a step-change in human efficiency, with hard numbers: $600/day median cost, $2.5M annualized for heavy users. The argument is data-backed and dir...