About a 50% chance that AI companies automate the whole AI research process by end of 2028
“They are already starting to work on training AIs to do the whole research process, not just the coding. It’s unclear when they will succeed but my team and I think it could happen any year now. I personally would guess about 50% chance by end of 2028.”
Context: Daniel Kokotajlo's five-minute opening statement to the US Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Hawley on 30 Sep 2026, published on the AI Futures Project blog. "They" refers to frontier AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
How we judge it
Our interpretation: YES if by 31 Dec 2028 a frontier AI company has automated essentially the whole AI research and development process (AI systems, not human researchers, generate, run and interpret most of the research behind new frontier models, with humans mainly overseeing), as credibly reported by the company or independent evaluators. Stated probability 50%, so it is scored on calibration.
Resolution criteria are our interpretation of the claim, written before grading. Methodology
- Said
- Resolve by
- Due in 812 days
- Verdict
- Open
- Stated probability
- 50%
- Specificity
- 2 of 3 (dated, some interpretation)
- What changes for
- Software Research & science
- Readiness milestone
- Part of AI automates AI research (recursive self-improvement) (says it happens)
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