OpenAI’s o3 model might be costlier to run than originally estimated

When OpenAI unveiled its o3 “reasoning” AI model in December, the company partnered with the creators of ARC-AGI, a benchmark designed to test highly capable AI, to showcase o3’s capabilities. Months later, the results have been revised, and they now look slightly less impressive than they did initially. Last week, the Arc Prize Foundation, which maintains and administers ARC-AGI, updated its approximate computing costs for o3. The organization originally estimated that the best-performing configuration of o3 it tested, o3 high, cost around $3,000 to solve a single ARC-AGI problem. Now, the Arc Prize Foundation thinks that the cost is much higher — possibly around $30,000 per task. The revision is notable because it illustrates just how expensive today’s most sophisticated AI models may end up being for certain tasks, at least early on. OpenAI has yet to price o3 — or release it, even. But the Arc Prize Foundation believes OpenAI’s o1-pro model pricing is a reasonable proxy. For con ... Read full article.