Definition
Plain language
How much something will give up to get relief or a reward.
As stated in the literature
Behavioral-economic measure of motivational strength, operationalized in animal work via effort or forgone resources; in LLM experiments the 'cost' is often stipulated in the scenario and may fall on the user rather than the model.
Also called: willingness-to-pay
Why it matters: It turns claims about how badly something wants relief into something measurable, though with language models the "cost" is often just words in a scenario, which weakens the evidence.
For example, a rat that repeatedly presses a lever despite a mild shock to reach pain medication is showing how much it will pay for relief.
Heard on the show
“But "willingness to pay" needs care here.”Episode 267 — A Pain Axis, a Relief Button, and the Control the Paper Skipped