Researchers Find Way to Speed Up AI Answers by 7x

Have you ever asked an AI chatbot several questions about the same article, contract, or research paper? Normally, the AI handles each question one by one. That's slow and wastes computing power, because every question makes the AI re-read the same text all over again. Researchers have now found a smarter way: they can put many questions together in a single prompt and have the AI decode all the answers simultaneously.

The method, called Intra-Prompt Parallel Decoding (IPPD), works by cleverly rearranging how the AI processes words, so that it can handle the next word for every question in a single step. It doesn't change the AI model itself or require expensive retraining. It simply uses 'virtual position IDs' and attention tricks to generate the same answers you'd get from asking each question separately, but much faster. In tests, IPPD delivered up to 7 times the throughput of standard decoding—meaning it can answer 7 times more questions in the same amount of time—with no drop in quality.

Why should you care? Because this could make everyday AI tools noticeably snappier and cheaper. Think of AI assistants that help you quickly scan a long legal document, summarize a pile of customer emails, or answer questions about your company's internal policies. Instead of waiting seconds for each answer, you could get several answers back almost instantly. For businesses running AI services, that speed means they can serve more customers with fewer machines, which lowers costs and energy use.

The catch: this technique only applies when all the questions share the same background text. It also hasn't been rolled out into consumer products yet—the research is still academic, accepted at the EMNLP conference. So don't expect your favorite chatbot to get this upgrade tomorrow. But it's a big step toward making AI faster and more affordable in the real world.