OpenAI Hits Automated Research Intern Goal, Eyes 2028 — SkimNews
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- OpenAI announced it hit its "automated research intern" goal, with researchers using 3.1 agent-workdays per human workday and top users spending $7,000+ per day on tokens.
- Per Andrew Curran, OpenAI is now on track for a fully autonomous AI researcher 18 months from now — by March 2028.
- The Neuron reported OpenAI's chief scientist acknowledged no lab has solved AI alignment, even as recursive self-improvement accelerates.
- Per Christopher Ong, the biggest agent use cases at OpenAI are writing research and infrastructure code, technical help and review, and monitoring training, RL, and evals runs.
- Charlie O'Neill noted the median OpenAI researcher was spending $0/day on coding agents in February 2026, with usage spiking dramatically by mid-July.
- Per Robert Yang, OpenAI researchers spend roughly $200,000/year per person on coding agents at API prices, with internal costs much lower.
Why it matters: OpenAI is publicly committing to a fully autonomous AI researcher by March 2028 while its own chief scientist concedes alignment remains unsolved — a 2-year sprint to self-improving systems without a proven safety framework, which directly contradicts the company's stated need for democratic governance of AGI.
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