Because 8 ≈ e², Anthropic's researcher uplift is plausibly >2x

METR (AI lab research) · 8 Jul 2026

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Note: the modeling assumptions and conclusion are Thomas Kwa’s opinion, and others at METR disagree. 1 Also, the math was checked by Claude but not a second human. Introduction Anthropic’s RSI blog post reported that in Q2 2026, Anthropic contributors merged 8× as much code per day as in the 2021-2024 period. What does this imply about the factor by which a researcher’s total effective output increased — the (serial) researcher uplift 2 ? Of course, 8× more code doesn’t mean 8× more research, as coding is only part of the job. However, if we assume each line of code (LoC) has equivalent quality and verbosity to pre-2025 code and make standard economic modeling assumptions, we can conclude a surprising amount: all models predict researcher uplift at Anthropic from coding agents alone is >2×. (Researcher uplift could be even higher, because these numbers assume no uplift on non-code tasks.) Cobb-Douglas predicts that if pre-AI time spent coding is \(\beta=50\%\) and code output increases by a factor \(M=8\), then researcher uplift is \(M^\beta = 2.83\). CES (constant elasticity of substitution) production functions, due to a fun mathematical coincidence, infer a narrow range of about \([2.75, 2.91]\) if code is homogeneous. If code is CES but non-homogeneous, such that AI speeds up low-stakes code more than high-stakes code, we obtain a range of \([2.33, 2.66]\), lower but still over 2x. However, there are several reasons new code may not be equivalent to old code, which would be at least partially resolvable with internal Anthropic data. Verbosity: \(M\) substantially overstates true quality-adjusted code output (e.g. perhaps AI code is >2x more verbose than human code for the same functionality). Barely-useful code: AIs are speeding up people enormously (>20x) on low-stakes code that would never have been written pre-AI, but is only 5%-20% as valuable as normal code. Researcher irrationality: Anthropic researchers are producing code that doesn’t contribute to resear

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Published: 2026 (3 months ago)
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Because 8 ≈ e², Anthropic's researcher uplift is plausibly >2x

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