LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"How to game the METR plot" by shash42

21 Dec 2025

Audio

Description

TL;DR: In 2025, we were in the 1-4 hour range, which has only 14 samples in METR's underlying data. The topic of each sample is public, making it easy to game METR horizon length measurements for a frontier lab, sometimes inadvertently. Finally, the “horizon length” under METR's assumptions might be adding little information beyond benchmark accuracy. None of this is to criticize METR—in research, its hard to be perfect on the first release. But I’m tired of what is being inferred from this plot, pls stop! 14 prompts ruled AI discourse in 2025 The METR horizon length plot was an excellent idea: it proposed measuring the length of tasks models can complete (in terms of estimated human hours needed) instead of accuracy. I'm glad it shifted the community toward caring about long-horizon tasks. They are a better measure of automation impacts, and economic outcomes (for example, labor laws are often based on number of hours of work). However, I think we are overindexing on it, far too much. Especially the AI Safety community, which based on it, makes huge updates in timelines, and research priorities. I suspect (from many anecdotes, including roon's) the METR plot has influenced significant investment [...] ---Outline:(01:24) 14. prompts ruled AI discourse in 2025(04:58) To improve METR horizon length, train on cybersecurity contests(07:12) HCAST Accuracy alone predicts log-linear trend in METR Horizon Lengths --- First published: December 20th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2RwDgMXo6nh42egoC/how-to-game-the-metr-plot --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

Transcribed and ready to explore now

"Ada Palmer: Inventing the Renaissance" by Martin Sustrik

28 Jan 2026

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"The inaugural Redwood Research podcast" by Buck, ryan_greenblatt

27 Jan 2026

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"Canada Lost Its Measles Elimination Status Because We Don’t Have Enough Nurses Who Speak Low German" by jenn

26 Jan 2026

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

[Linkpost] "“The first two weeks are the hardest”: my first digital declutter" by mingyuan

20 Jan 2026

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"Why we are excited about confession!" by boazbarak, Gabriel Wu, Manas Joglekar

19 Jan 2026

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"Backyard cat fight shows Schelling points preexist language" by jchan

16 Jan 2026

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

View all episodes from LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"How to game the METR plot" by shash42

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

"Ada Palmer: Inventing the Renaissance" by Martin Sustrik

"The inaugural Redwood Research podcast" by Buck, ryan_greenblatt

"Canada Lost Its Measles Elimination Status Because We Don’t Have Enough Nurses Who Speak Low German" by jenn

[Linkpost] "“The first two weeks are the hardest”: my first digital declutter" by mingyuan

"Why we are excited about confession!" by boazbarak, Gabriel Wu, Manas Joglekar

"Backyard cat fight shows Schelling points preexist language" by jchan

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment