#compute costs

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A wall-mounted magnetic budget-allocation board with rows of machined brass tiles set against labelled compute-budget lines, one tile caught lifted clear of the pretraining row and not yet set down on the post-training row beside it

What Alignment Actually Costs

A preference comparison costs cents, an RLHF run costs a measurable slice of pretraining, and covering a model's attack surface costs more expert-hours than any lab funds: the documented economics of alignment, and where it truly competes with capability.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 23, 2026 · 15 min read

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