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AI glossary · a term from The AI Stairway™

Cost per task

Also called cost per finished task.

Cost per task, from The AI Stairway™ course, is what it really costs to get one job finished to standard with AI: people’s time to prepare, check and fix it, plus the AI’s usage, including its working out, and a share of the licence. A cheaper model that needs more fixing can cost more per task than a dearer one.

Think of it as

The price of the finished meal, not of each ingredient.

Why it matters at work

A price per token or per licence says little on its own, because checking and fixing time counts too. Module 3 introduces it, and Module 10 uses it, as cost per finished task, to judge a workflow.

This is a term The AI Stairway™ course uses for its own method; you won’t find it in every AI glossary.