Output per frontier AI model

Alan D. Thompson
February 2026

AI output has expanded at a pace that is difficult to intuit without scale comparisons. This visualization tracks the change from GPT-3 in 2021 to GPT-4o in 2024 and to frontier systems in 2025, then sets those figures against aggregate human output. The shift is quantitative and structural. Framed against a physical benchmark, model output advances from a single New York Public Library per year to multiple libraries per day. The comparison clarifies the order-of-magnitude transition in how much text a single frontier AI model can generate.

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^* 25/Mar/2021: ‘We currently generate an average of 4.5 billion words [6B tokens] per day’ https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-apps/
^* 23/Jul/2024: ‘GPT-4o mini… processing more than 200B tokens per day’ https://x.com/sama/status/1815837743593172612
^* 19/Dec/2025: ‘Let’s say that an AI company today might be generating something on the order of 10 trillion tokens a day. It’s more, but it’s not a quadrillion tokens for anybody, I don’t think.’ https://youtu.be/2RZZFH1-uLw?t=1861
^* 19/Dec/2025: ‘We’re going to have these models at a company outputting more tokens per day than all of humanity put together. And then 10 times that, and then 100 times that.’ https://youtu.be/2RZZFH1-uLw?t=1909

Figures rounded for readability. 1 word ≈ 1.33 tokens. 133K tokens ≈ 100K words ≈ 1 book. 1 New York Public Library ≈ 12M books ≈ 1.6T tokens ≈ 1.2T words. Human output ≈ 20K words x 8B people ≈ 160T words ≈ 213.3T tokens. Alan D. Thompson, 2026.

Alan D. Thompson is a world expert in artificial intelligence, advising everyone from Apple to the US Government on integrated AI. Throughout Mensa International’s history, both Isaac Asimov and Alan held leadership roles, each exploring the frontier between human and artificial minds. His landmark analysis of post-2020 AI—from his widely-cited Models Table to his regular intelligence briefing The Memo—has shaped how governments and Fortune 500s approach artificial intelligence. With popular tools like the Declaration on AI Consciousness, and the ASI checklist, Alan continues to illuminate humanity’s AI evolution. Technical highlights.