AI agent teams waste tokens for small quality gains
research finds ai agent teams cost 1.8x to 5.1x more than single agents but show barely measurable quality gains. this affects companies using ai for tasks.
vals ai tested gpt-6 sol and claude opus 5.5 on the vibe code bench in solo and team setups at two reasoning levels. teams cost 1.8x to 5.1x more than single agents but only showed a statistically significant improvement in one case: gpt-6 sol at medium reasoning with a 7.3 point higher score. anthropic's own tests with opus 5.5 showed similar results. openai researcher noam brown noted that multi-agent systems mainly buy speed, not better quality. this affects companies using ai for tasks and may signal a need to reevaluate the use of agent teams.