AI Reports · GovAI (Oxford) · 2026-10-17 · Report / white paper
Technical AI Governance Inference Scaling and AI Governance October 2025 Technical Report Toby Ord The shift from scaling up the compute used to pre-train AI systems (pre-training compute) to scaling
The shift from scaling pre-training compute to scaling inference compute may have profound effects on AI governance. The effects depend on whether inference compute is mainly used to improve performance during external deployment or as part of a more complex training program within the lab. Rapid scaling of inference at deployment would lower the importance of open-weight models and reduce the need for power-intensive data centers.