Research
These notes measure how close AI is to running scientific research on its own. The first one looks at AI research itself. The analyses are independent of the benchmark and of the organisations whose data they use.
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Projecting fully autonomous AI research at Anthropic
Anthropic released an index showing, month by month, how much of its model R&D work AI does. As of August 2026, AI leads 26.3% of that work. Fitting Anthropic's data with METR's independent acceleration measurements, the median date for AI to handle 95% or more of Anthropic's model R&D with no human in the loop is December 2027, with a 50% chance between July 2027 and September 2028. The dates assume no deliberate slowdown.