Risk Report: August 2026

3 Autonomy threat model 2: Risks from automated R&D 3.1 Overview Threat model Highly capable AI models may be able to perform automated research and development (R&D) that rapidly accelerates progress in technical fields. Although there could be enormous benefits from this, these would come with corresponding risks. Under human control, such acceleration could disrupt the balance of power both within and between nation states. If combined with an AI system pursuing dangerous goals of its own, it could lead to catastrophic harm initiated by the AI itself. Rapid automated R&D in the field of AI research is of particular interest because of the potential to produce a variety of further AI-related risks. Overall risk assessment Low. We do not believe our models meet either RSP criterion for this threat model. However, we are less confident in this assessment than we were in prior risk reports, since our most concrete task-based evaluations have “saturated”—i.e., they no longer capture increases in models’ capabilities—and because we are seeing early signs of potential acceleration. Relevant AI model(s) When considering whether our models can fully automate the work of our Research Scientists and Research Engineers, we focus on Claude Mythos 5, Claude Mythos Preview, and Model 2, our most capable models as of the coverage date. When considering whether our models can dramatically accelerate our AI R&D work, we consider the entire trajectory of our model development, since the threat concerns the rate of progress rather than the properties of any single model. We also consider the possibility of automated or dramatically accelerated R&D in other domains via expert interviews in Section 3.6; these reflect usage of Claude Mythos Preview and Mythos 5 (in the case of our internal experts) and publicly-available models from a mixture of AI companies roughly comparable to Opus 4.7 or Opus 4.8 (in the case of external experts). 93