.@fleetingbits on whether OpenAI’s exploding research-agent use is the beginning of recursive self-improvement, as spend doubles every 2.4 months: "Coding agent spend at OpenAI has just exploded. I don't know if it makes sense to call it coding agent spend anymore or research agent. It has a doubling time of like 2.4 months." "The spend for a median researcher right now at API prices is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and for a 90th percentile researcher is in the millions of…

fleetingbits@fleetingbitsSep 9

openai released very interesting internal data on recursive self-improvement; we can use the data to construct a metr style task horizon for research tasks; it appears perhaps more bearish than i would expect though; with 50% success at ~8 hour tasks in July 2026 https://t.co/lqyn7XxwLM https://t.co/mnz0PqtGK8