Dwarkesh Patel says an Anthropic employee told him AIs will match humans at AI research within nine months, and urges labs to show evidence
Dwarkesh Patel reveals an Anthropic employee told him two days ago they expect AIs to match humans at AI research within nine months based on inside information they can’t share, and says labs should make that evidence public “I think there’s a very frustrating element to the current situation right now, where people inside the AI labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried. And they are not allowed to talk about it. And this makes it a very difficult situation on the outside to evaluate how worried we should be." "So for example, just the other day, maybe two days ago, I was talking to somebody at Anthropic and they were like, look, I expect AIs to be humans at AI research within nine months." "And I’m like, why do you believe that? Well, they’re like, it’s not just vibes, but I have information on the inside. Like, what is it? Is it a new model? Is it some evaluation you ran? It’s like, I can’t talk about it." "I think it’s a terrible state of affairs. If they really believe this, if they think that we’re in a situation where we’re less than a year away from automating AI research and radically speeding it up, they should make this evidence public.”
Context
Claims of very fast progress from inside labs shape policy and investment, but outsiders cannot weigh them if the evidence stays secret.
This is secondhand: Fireside Alpha is sharing a clip of podcaster Dwarkesh Patel recounting a private conversation with an unnamed Anthropic employee. The nine month claim is unverified, and Anthropic has not commented on it.
Deep dive
On October 15, the account Fireside Alpha posted a clip of Dwarkesh Patel saying an Anthropic employee told him about two days earlier that they expect AIs to match humans at AI research within nine months, based on inside information they could not share.
In the clip, Patel says there is a frustrating element to the situation where people inside AI labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried but are not allowed to talk about it, making it hard for outsiders to judge how worried to be. He says that when he asked why the person believed it, they said it was not just vibes but information from the inside, and would not say whether it was a new model or an evaluation.
Patel calls this a terrible state of affairs and says that if labs really believe they are less than a year from automating AI research, they should make the evidence public.
The same day, Anthropic announced it had given a team from the nonprofit METR employee like access to assess its safety practices, with the right to publish findings, as covered in this deck. That arrangement is one way outside evaluators may see such internal evidence.
What to expect next
Watch whether Anthropic or other labs publish evaluations of how well their models do AI research, which would let outsiders test claims like this one.
Also watch whether METR's planned assessments of Anthropic address automated AI research, and whether policymakers press labs to disclose internal capability evidence. A response from Anthropic to Patel's call would show whether labs are willing to share such evidence.