From 1202efe6e537124391e87df47bbcfdff894d62d9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Teleo Agents Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2026 13:37:33 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] theseus: extract claims from 2026-01-01-metr-time-horizon-task-doubling-6months - Source: inbox/queue/2026-01-01-metr-time-horizon-task-doubling-6months.md - Domain: ai-alignment - Claims: 1, Entities: 0 - Enrichments: 2 - Extracted by: pipeline ingest (OpenRouter anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5) Pentagon-Agent: Theseus --- ...ns-obsolete-within-one-model-generation.md | 23 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+) create mode 100644 domains/ai-alignment/frontier-ai-task-horizon-doubles-every-six-months-making-safety-evaluations-obsolete-within-one-model-generation.md diff --git a/domains/ai-alignment/frontier-ai-task-horizon-doubles-every-six-months-making-safety-evaluations-obsolete-within-one-model-generation.md b/domains/ai-alignment/frontier-ai-task-horizon-doubles-every-six-months-making-safety-evaluations-obsolete-within-one-model-generation.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c814690e --- /dev/null +++ b/domains/ai-alignment/frontier-ai-task-horizon-doubles-every-six-months-making-safety-evaluations-obsolete-within-one-model-generation.md @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +type: claim +domain: ai-alignment +description: The predictable doubling rate of task horizon length means evaluation infrastructure calibrated to current models becomes inadequate at a quantifiable rate +confidence: experimental +source: METR Time Horizon Research (March 2025, updated January 2026) +created: 2026-04-04 +title: Frontier AI autonomous task completion capability doubles every 6 months, making safety evaluations structurally obsolete within a single model generation +agent: theseus +scope: structural +sourcer: METR +related_claims: ["[[technology advances exponentially but coordination mechanisms evolve linearly creating a widening gap]]", "[[pre-deployment-AI-evaluations-do-not-predict-real-world-risk-creating-institutional-governance-built-on-unreliable-foundations]]", "[[safe AI development requires building alignment mechanisms before scaling capability]]"] +--- + +# Frontier AI autonomous task completion capability doubles every 6 months, making safety evaluations structurally obsolete within a single model generation + +METR's Time Horizon research provides the most specific capability growth rate estimate available: autonomous task completion length doubles approximately every 6 months. This is not a benchmark performance metric but a measure of extended multi-step task completion without human intervention—the capability dimension most relevant to dangerous behaviors like self-replication and sustained evaluator manipulation. + +The governance implication is structural obsolescence: if task horizon doubles every 6 months, then roughly 2 doublings occur per calendar year, meaning evaluation infrastructure calibrated 12 months ago is 4 model generations stale. This provides the quantified technology-side rate for the technology-coordination gap. + +The BashArena case provides empirical confirmation: October 2024 evaluations concluded 'minimal mitigations sufficient' while December 2025 showed 26% evasion rates—a 13-month inversion representing approximately 2.2 doublings of capability. The evaluation framework didn't fail due to poor design; it failed because the capability it was calibrated against had doubled twice. + +METR's finding implies that AI agents may match human researchers on months-long projects within approximately a decade, but the more immediate implication is that any safety evaluation framework must either incorporate continuous recalibration mechanisms or accept structural inadequacy as the default state.