METR finds Anthropic model progress at 1.9x speed; AI2027 timeline moves up to 2027
新智元 · wechat · 2026-11-12
The AI Futures Project behind AI 2027 released an updated forecast (Q3.5): absent significant deliberate slowdown, a Superhuman AI Researcher will likely arrive in 2027 — about five months earlier than their prior scenario. Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo reacted that he feels "fear, grief and anger."
Key evidence: METR's Anthropic assessment
- After an 11-week investigation, METR estimated that from October 2025, Anthropic's internal model benchmark scores improved 1.9x faster than before (95% CI 1.5–2.8x)
- Training-compute growth can't explain the speedup; METR guesses 80% of the extra speedup by Oct 2026 comes from AI (high uncertainty)
- Interviewed researchers said AI writes experiment code, babysits runs; one hands ten ideas to agents at once to implement and test
Timeline implications
- By early Nov 2026, overall model progress may hit 1.7x historical rates; the old scenario reached that only around April 2027 — 5 months earlier
- Three estimation methods put SAR arrival medians at Feb 2027, Jul 2027, and mid-2028
Caveats
- Anthropic redacted key evidence (algorithmic progress estimates, R&D investment data); METR publicly flagged which conclusions rely on it
- METR's parallel review of Anthropic's August risk report suggests the public version may have understated the speedup, which could have crossed internal warning thresholds
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