Reliable autonomy

Area: definition. Apply the shared measurement protocol.

Estimated progress toward AI-managed software

20% complete — judgment-based estimate as of November 7, 2026. Confidence: low. The scale starts at 0% before ChatGPT's public release in 2022 and ends at 100% when AI manages the field's continuing advancement without human participation. This rates the outcome's contribution to that transition, not the percentage of tasks solved, a measured fraction of the field, or time remaining.

The shared scoring rubric uses five equally weighted dimensions: execution, breadth, agenda-setting, validation, and sustained autonomous improvement. Points for this outcome are 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 20/100, in that order; each dimension has a maximum of 20. These component judgments make the estimate inspectable, but are not independently measured scores.

Reason for the estimate: Existing evaluations support bounded autonomous work, but their duration coverage cannot establish current reliable performance across the required success probabilities. The dated baseline below supplies the findings and source links used for this assessment. Unmeasured components receive no demonstrated-progress credit; missing evidence does not prove a missing capability.

What would move the score: Expand the task-duration range; estimate all three success horizons with confidence intervals, model version and independent expert-duration estimates. Higher autonomy scores additionally require AI to select worthwhile work, validate results and improve the process over repeated cycles without human research management, repair or adjudication. Lower the score if replication fails, quality regresses or previously hidden human assistance is found. Preserve this dated estimate when adding future assessments.

Measurement and acceptance rule

Human-expert task duration at which the agent succeeds at 50%, 80%, and 95% probability. This is not the duration the agent itself runs.

Evidence requirements

Archive specifications, initial repository states, patches, independent tests, run logs, reviewer decisions, and follow-up defects. Reject test deletion, weakened acceptance criteria, hard-coded hidden answers, and fixes that pass narrow tests while violating the specification. Evaluate the tests themselves. Separate public benchmark results from private prospective evaluations.

Related milestones

See the area's proposed milestones. Proposed targets are distinct from the dated evidence below.

Baseline as of November 7 2026

Status: Existing measurement series has coverage limits. Sources accessed November 7, 2026. This is a documentary baseline, not an independent replication or an assertion of the worldwide best result. An unknown measurement is not zero.

Dated findings

September 8, 2026 page notice: METR's page says it stopped active updates on September 8, 2026 and warns that estimates above 16 human-expert hours are unreliable on the current suite. METR: task completion time horizons.

Interpretation and tracking value

This is a measurement ceiling, not a maximum agent capability. A current 50%/80%/95% horizon cannot be safely extrapolated from old chart trends.

Next comparable measurement

Expand the task-duration range; estimate all three success horizons with confidence intervals, model version and independent expert-duration estimates. Preserve this dated observation; append future results with their model/system version, denominator, budget and evidence level rather than overwriting it.