The problem
What needs solving
Measure how much AI is speeding up the research that builds the next AI systems, and give outsiders a way to check that a declared limit on that speed-up is kept.
Why it matters
In September 2026 Anthropic’s chief executive wrote that AI has advanced drastically faster since about the summer, mainly because AI now helps build its successors. Anthropic says its AI now carries out about 26% of its AI research tasks largely on its own, up from under 1% in February; the count is its own, with no outside audit. A separate METR team’s preliminary estimate puts the speed-up at about 1.5 times, but it gives no period and has not yet shown its evidence. There is no agreed measure.
What counts as progress
(a) Every leading AI lab publishes, each quarter, the same measure of how much of its AI research its AI does, and an independent auditor checks it against company records. (b) A trial run outside the labs, its plan published first, measures the speed-up on unseen research tasks and matches the labs’ reported figures within 25%, repeated yearly. (c) Solved when, in a yearly exercise where a team secretly breaks a declared limit, outside auditors using audited records and evaluators inside the labs catch 90% of breaches, with at most 10% false alarms.
Stater & version history
Stated by UNSOLVED editors
18 Oct 2026 — Stated by the UNSOLVED editors for the founding registry, from the research of October 2026.