Review of the "Risks from automated R&D" section in Anthropic's Risk Report (August 2026)

METR reviewed the Risks from automated R&D section of Anthropic's August 2026 Risk Report and concluded that while internal models posed low direct catastrophic risk by July 15th, Anthropic's claim that models had not crossed their early warning threshold is overconfident. The reviewers argue it is plausible that models crossed the 2x acceleration threshold and that the public report understates the level of acceleration occurring. Open article →