Hinton, Bengio, Pachocki and Clark co-author a paper warning that automated AI research could trigger an 'intelligence explosion'

More than 20 AI researchers have published a paper warning that AI systems able to automate AI research could set off an 'intelligence explosion' that compresses years of progress into months or less. The authors include Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, Microsoft's Eric Horvitz and Dawn Song of UC Berkeley. They wrote in a personal capacity. The paper comes from the Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy at the University of Cambridge. It says AI already writes most of the code at the companies that build it. Citing Anthropic data, it reports that AI's share of approved code there rose from low single digits to more than 80 percent between January 2025 and May 2026. The share of R&D work done by AI with only light human supervision rose from 1 percent to 26 percent between March and August 2026. The authors say some tentative extrapolations suggest months-long research projects could be automated by mid-2028. They warn that society may not keep pace, that control over superhuman systems could slip, and that the balance of power among nations and companies could erode. They urge policymakers to gain far more visibility into how AI research is being automated. 'Once an intelligence explosion begins, the window for action may close,' they wrote.