“AI R&D Is Accelerating Towards Potential RSI in 2027” by Zvi

METR came out with an extensive report on how much AI is accelerating AI R&D at Anthropic, and thus how close we might be to recursive self-improvement (RSI) and how far that might go. This is one of the most important questions in the world. Their answer: Things are already accelerating on the order of a 2 times speedup. This is several months ahead of the AI 2027 timeline. A naive extrapolation says we may be less than a year away from full RSI. There are no clear bottlenecks in the way. This report updated many towards shorter timelines. This is consistent with what OpenAI and Anthropic themselves have been saying, and with extrapolation from the progress we are observing. We are running out of time. That doesn’t have to be the way this plays out. We could stop the labs. The labs could choose to stop. Or the estimates could be wrong, or some bottlenecks could be hit, or the results could be less impactful than we expect. Indeed do many things come to pass. And if it does happen this quickly, one would expect it to go quite poorly, and likely [...] --- Outline: (06:54) Top Conclusions (09:31) Data Access and Redactions (15:23) The Pace of Progress (17:09) 1, 2, 3, 4 (17:56) Timing Is Everything (19:14) What Could Possibly Have Gone Wrong? (20:58) AECI (25:41) The Public Information Alone Could Suggest Slower Speedup (29:01) Well, That Escalated Quickly (39:44) This Infinite Series Likely Has a Finite Sum (41:02) We Cannot Say What We Cannot Say (41:28) Study of Anthropic's Compute Allocation Was Postponed (42:58) Security Mindset (44:50) It's a Secret to Everyone (54:05) Review of the Risk Report from August 2026 (56:52) A Word From Our Cofounder (01:03:48) People Update Their Timelines and Expectations (01:10:11) You Are Not Ready (01:11:18) If (If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies) Then Don't Let Anyone Build It (01:14:25) How Can We Legally Define RSI? --- First published: November 9th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/je5X4xEuehu3j3HoF/ai-r-and-d-is-accelerating-towards-potential-rsi-in-2027 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: <a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswron