Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies
Forecasts of explosive AI progress hinge on AI agents automating AI research. But evidence on whether agents can carry out open-ended AI research is thin. Current evaluations either test agents on narrow, verifiable tasks, which excludes open-ended research, or submit AI-generated papers to blind peer review, which is overstretched, stochastic, and suffers from poor review quality. We introduce a third way to measure progress towards AI R\&D automation. An agent takes on the central, open-ended
Record details
Published: 29 July 2026
Source: arXiv cs.AI
Category: Research
Topics: Jobs & economy · Agents & autonomy
Retrieved: 30 July 2026
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ethics.ai (29 July 2026), “Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies,” evidence record 14800, https://ethics.ai/record/14800 (originally published by arXiv cs.AI).
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