General capability - and capabilities generally - have no good y-axis

Published on August 4, 2026 2:11 PM GMTBLUF:To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our me...