# Claude now leads a quarter of Anthropic's AI research

> Anthropic's chatbot is doing more of the work to build its own successor, raising questions about AI safety and control.
- Title: Claude now leads a quarter of Anthropic's AI research
- Summary: Anthropic's chatbot is doing more of the work to build its own successor, raising questions about AI safety and control. Claude has jumped from doing almost…
- Keywords: anthropic, claude, ai research, ai safety, recursive self-improvement, autonomous systems, dario amodei, ai development pace, frontier ai labs, ai transparency, business, technology
- Source: Business Insider — https://businessinsider.com/claude-leading-quarter-of-ai-research-to-replace-itself-2026-9
- Author: Katherine Li
- Published: 2026-09-18T04:02:01.279+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: anthropic, claude, ai research, ai safety, recursive self-improvement, autonomous systems, dario amodei, ai development pace, frontier ai labs, ai transparency, business, technology
## Claude now leads a quarter of research
Anthropic says Claude completes 26% of its AI research and development work with human supervision, up from below 1% in March.

> Claude now "leads" 26% of its AI research and development work
## What 'leading' research actually means
Claude can complete most of a task from a high-level prompt while humans supervise. The company says 90% of work is at or above 'AI collaborates' level.

> Claude can complete most of a task from a high-level prompt while a human supervises
## The path to self-improving AI
Anthropic describes recursive self-improvement as a model fully autonomously building its successor. The company is tracking how close it is to this milestone.

> a model fully autonomously building its successor
## Safety concerns drive transparency
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for frontier AI companies to coordinate on slowing development to give safety measures time to catch up.
## Anthropic's safety monitoring in action
Automated monitors reviewed over 1 billion decisions in August, blocking about one in 47,000. Roughly 50 high-priority cases are escalated for human review each week.

> 0.002% of more than 1 billion decisions analyzed in August, which amounts to about one in 47,000, were blocked
## Calling for industry-wide transparency
Anthropic says other frontier labs should publish similar metrics and allow third parties to verify them, giving society visibility into AI development.
## Key takeaway

Claude has jumped from doing almost no AI research work in March to leading 26% by September, marking rapid progress toward systems that could improve themselves without human intervention.