Anthropic's AI Development Accelerates Despite CEO's Warning on Unchecked Progress

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is developing its AI systems nearly twice as fast as it did a year ago, despite its chief executive's calls for slowing technological advancement until adequate safety measures are in place, according to an independent research group's assessment.

The findings were released on Thursday by the Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), a California-based nonprofit that examined the company's internal data and interviewed employees.

METR estimated that Anthropic's capabilities in performing well-defined tasks have improved at approximately twice the previous rate. Researchers attributed much of the acceleration to the increasing use of AI systems to develop more advanced AI models. Anthropic has previously acknowledged that its Claude chatbot is increasingly assisting the company in building newer and more sophisticated versions of itself.

The assessment was conducted over approximately 11 weeks, from mid-August to late October, after Anthropic provided researchers access to internal data on its research and development processes.

METR said Anthropic appeared to have made as much progress on certain benchmarks in the past year as it had between October 2023 and October 2025.

However, the researchers cautioned that the findings could be overstated and might apply primarily to tasks that can be automatically evaluated. They also ruled out increased computing power as the reason for the acceleration.

A key concern, according to METR, is that AI-driven self-improvement could accelerate further, potentially outpacing humans' ability to understand and control increasingly advanced systems.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in a September 12 essay, had urged the industry to slow the pace of AI capability improvements to allow safety measures to catch up. He also warned that unchecked recursive self-improvement could create serious risks.

Anthropic is reportedly preparing for a stock market debut later this month, which could potentially become the biggest initial public offering ever.