Agents2 sources
7d agoSwarms Trade Token Efficiency For Speed
Four-agent swarms require double the total tokens of single agents to complete tasks. Toby Ord frames this swarm scaling as a form of inference-scaling that prioritizes wall-clock time over compute efficiency. Parallelization allows faster task completion despite the higher token cost.
The Signal
Practitioners must now weigh raw speed against increased operational expenses when deploying agentic workflows.