Machines Building Machines: Claude Neural Network Takes Over 26% of Its Own R&D Tasks

The AI industry has passed the point of no return in the automation of intellectual labor. On September 18, 2026, Anthropic officially confirmed that the Claude model autonomously performs about 26% of all the company's R&D tasks for creating its next version. Furthermore, 90% of engineering work is already conducted in a hybrid format (human + machine).

Recursive self-improvement is no longer science fiction. The algorithm is capable of designing architecture, identifying bugs, and optimizing weights with minimal human supervision. For the macroeconomics of the tech sector, this signals an impending collapse in development costs. Classic programmers are definitively being marginalized by AI agents. The speed of model evolution is henceforth constrained not by the number of hired data scientists, but solely by the volume of available server hardware and electricity.

Source: Anthropic / AP