Anthropic Warns of Self-Improving AI, Backs Frontier AI Pause as Claude Writes 80% of Company Code

# Anthropic Warns of Self-Improving AI, Backs Frontier AI Pause as Claude Writes 80% of Company Code Source: [https://www.ibtimes.sg/anthropic-warns-self-improving-ai-calls-temporary-pause-claude-now-writes-over-80-its-code-87441](https://www.ibtimes.sg/anthropic-warns-self-improving-ai-calls-temporary-pause-claude-now-writes-over-80-its-code-87441) Anthropic has issued one of its strongest warnings yet about the future of artificial intelligence \(AI\), revealing that its Claude AI models are already accelerating AI development while simultaneously arguing that the world should have the ability to temporarily pause frontier AI research if progress begins to outpace safety measures\. [The company](https://www.ibtimes.sg/eu-set-access-anthropics-powerful-ai-hacking-tool-fears-grow-over-cyber-threats-87280)said it would support a coordinated and verifiable slowdown or pause in advanced AI development if other leading AI labs agreed to do the same\. In a[new report](https://www.anthropic.com/institute/recursive-self-improvement)from The Anthropic Institute, the company presented internal and public benchmark data showing that AI systems are increasingly contributing to the creation of newer and more capable AI models\. While Anthropic stressed that fully autonomous AI development has not yet been achieved, it warned that the possibility of "recursive self\-improvement", where AI systems design and develop their own successors, may arrive sooner than many institutions expect\. "AI is already accelerating the development of AI systems," the report states\. According to Anthropic, its engineers now ship roughly eight times more code per quarter than they did between 2021 and 2025, largely due to assistance from Claude\. ### **Claude Authors Over 80% of Production Code** The company disclosed that as of May 2026, more than 80% of the code merged into Anthropic's production codebase was authored by Claude\. > Claude writes a significant proportion of Anthropic's code\. As of May 2026, more than 80% of the code we merge into Anthropic's codebase was authored by Claude\.3Before Claude Code launched in research preview in February 2025, this number was in the low single digits\. That shift also shows up in the amount of output per engineer ### **Rapid Gains in Coding, Research and Long\-Duration Task Performance** The report also highlights rapid improvements in AI capabilities\. Anthropic noted that the duration of tasks AI systems can reliably complete has been doubling approximately every four months\. > In March 2024, Claude Opus 3 could complete software tasks that take humans about four minutes to complete\. A year later, Claude Sonnet 3\.7 managed tasks that took about an hour and a half\. A year after that, Claude Opus 4\.6 managed 12\-hour tasks\.1If this trend holds, tasks that take a skilled person days could come into range this year\. In 2027, AI systems could be capable of tasks that take a person weeks\. Anthropic said models have effectively saturated tests such as SWE\-bench, a widely used software engineering benchmark and CORE\-Bench, which measures a model's ability to reproduce scientific research\. Internally, Claude's capabilities are advancing beyond coding\. Anthropic reported that the AI can now execute well\-defined research experiments at superhuman speed\. Anthropic Claude MythosGoogle \- Gemini In one test,[Claude Mythos Preview](https://www.ibtimes.sg/anthropics-claude-mythos-preview-uncovers-10000-high-risk-software-vulnerabilities-50-partners-86807)achieved approximately a 52\-fold improvement in code optimization performance, compared with the roughly fourfold gains typically achieved by skilled human researchers after several hours of work\. Anthropic believes the human role in AI development is gradually narrowing\. While AI systems can increasingly write code, run experiments and identify solutions independently, humans still retain a significant advantage in "research taste and judgment", deciding which problems matter and what directions research should take\. However, the company warned that this advantage may not remain permanent\. > The less conservative reading is that the early evidence on Claude's improving research judgment—narrow as it is today—is an indicator that this capability is improving as well\. "Research taste" might be just another AI capability that AI systems fail at for a time, then get good at\. We've seen a similar pattern with other qualitative skills, like AI systems being able to explain why a joke is funny, demonstrate theory of mind, and solve linguistic riddles\. ### **Pause in Frontier AI Research** Anthropic stated that without a worldwide coordinating framework, corporations and governments will be forced to make difficult safety decisions under competitive and geopolitical pressures\. > We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology\. The AI giant plans to convene policymakers, researchers, civil society groups and AI companies to discuss the risks of recursive self\-improvement and potential coordination mechanisms\. Anthropic said it will publish the outcomes and says broader public participation is needed while there is still time to shape[AI governance\.](https://www.ibtimes.sg/bernie-sanders-ai-wealth-sharing-plan-give-americans-ownership-stakes-openai-anthropic-xai-87289) Without such coordination, the company warned, competitive pressures could undermine safety efforts and accelerate the race toward increasingly autonomous AI systems\.