Anthropic warns AI could soon improve itself without human involvement, urges industrywide pause on development

Anthropic published a blog post Thursday stating that more than 80% of code merged into its codebase is now written by Claude, and engineers are shipping roughly eight times as much code per quarter as they were before 2025. The authors warn this trajectory is heading toward 'recursive self-improvement'—a process in which AI systems autonomously design, build, and train their own successors without humans driving each step.

The company argues the threshold for autonomous self-improvement 'could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for,' and without adequate safeguards could make it significantly harder for humans to maintain meaningful control over AI development.

Anthropic is advocating for a pause on AI development, but only if 'multiple well-resourced labs at or near the frontier, in multiple countries, agree to stop under the same conditions.' The timing coincides with the company's confidential IPO paperwork filed last week and its recent $965 billion valuation.