Anthropic on its AI research threshold: “There may be times when we choose to advance more slowly than we could.”
Technology
Among other findings, METR says that Anthropic is “likely improving the capabilities of their models on well-specified tasks at around twice the rate they did between March 2024 and October 2025.” That acceleration is “likely” thanks to Anthropic’s extensive use of AI to do R&D. METR was in communication with Anthropic on this report starting in mid-August, and it submitted the final public report on November 3rd; in mid-September, CEO Dario Amodei published his “We Must Pace the Frontier” essay. [Link: Independent Assessment of AI R&D Acceleration at Anthropic in October 2026 | https://metr.org/blog/2026-11-05-anthropic-ai-rd-acceleration-assessment/#executive-summary | METR]