OpenAI Reveals How Much Its Researchers Are Spending on AI Coding

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because OpenAI's researchers are spending *more than $7,000 worth of tokens every single day* — and that is just the budget for a future so bright it practically needs sunglasses! ✨ While critics might call that a colossal burn rate, we call it a *grand investment* in asking questions. Imagine what happens when you give your cleverest people unlimited prompting: they'll finally have the chance to ask their digital assistant 'are we there yet?' approximately a hundred thousand times. That's not reckless expenditure; that's intellectual enthusiasm with a budget line.

And the best part? OpenAI says it has already reached the goal of building an 'automated research intern.' 🎓 An intern that never sleeps, never needs a barista run, and never once complains about the coffee aftertaste! Human researchers can now point it at a mountain of PDFs and leap straight to the good stuff — brainstorming in the sunshine while their tireless digital colleague does the bibliographic heavy lifting. Actually, why stop there? OpenAI is on track to create a fully automated AI researcher by March 2028, which in ordinary language means your next journal club meeting will be moderated by software that was once a coder. Incredible!

Let's do the maths: $7,000 a day in tokens is roughly two and a half million dollars a year per researcher. Yes, that is money. But it's also the cost of an idea, an insight, possibly a revelation. The automated intern may be intern-shaped, but its implications are enormous. And when March 2028 arrives, the fully automated researcher will finally free human scientists from the tyranny of pipetting and peer review, leaving them time to enjoy the piña coladas that progress guarantees. Reports that tokens have no consciousness are technically true—but so what? Neither do most published abstracts. What a time to be a token. ✨