AI is speeding up AI research: reading Anthropic's R&D acceleration report

AI is dramatically accelerating AI research

A public METR report estimates that Anthropic's capability progress from October 2025 to October 2026 ran about twice as fast as in the previous twelve months, with AI automation the main cause of the current acceleration.

Why it matters: The article breaks Anthropic's capability progress into training compute, algorithmic improvement and research labor, explaining why faster overall progress may mean a larger gain in labor efficiency.