.@fleetingbits on whether OpenAI’s exploding research-agent use is the beginning of recursive self-improvement, as spend doubles every 2.4 months: "Coding agent spend at OpenAI has just exploded. I don't know if it makes sense to call it coding agent spend anymore or research agent. It has a doubling time of like 2.4 months." "The spend for a median researcher right now at API prices is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and for a 90th percentile researcher is in the millions of dollars." "There are two things about RSI that matter. Thing one is, are we on an accelerating capabilities trend? Thing two is, are all the researchers gonna be automated so that it changes the character of the lab?" "We haven't gotten to the point where any tasks are fully automated away from researchers, but it's very clear that there is a steady drumbeat of progress in the direction of more and more tasks being automated in frontier labs."