# OpenAI's chief scientist wrote that he expects the current pace to be sustained into recursive self-improvement, and that systems will increasingly drive their own development

Page: https://flyvolo.ai/en/changes/ev-20260906-ai-researcher-3
Date: 2026-09-06 · Stage: Forecast
Can this record move a task judgement? no
Occupation: https://flyvolo.ai/en/careers/ai-researcher

## Scope

A signed essay, not a measurement, and that distinction is the entire reason this record exists in a stage that can change nothing. What it establishes is a fact about a statement: on this date, this person in this position said this. Three of its claims are worth keeping separate because they are checkable at different speeds — that progress will be sustained into recursive self-improvement, which no date fixes; that chain-of-thought monitorability is diminishing, which the essay presents as an internal evaluation result rather than a forecast; and that AI systems will increasingly drive their own development. Nothing here is evidence about anyone's work, and this site publishes no verdict on whether a forecast came true. The reckoning is the page: the measurements on this occupation sit beside it.

## Source

- OpenAI — An Alien Mind, by Jakub Pachocki, Chief Scientist — https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/ (primary source)

## What this means

The person with the most internal visibility into how these systems are built has put a prediction on the record, under his own name, on a dated page: that the current pace can be sustained into systems increasingly driving their own development. That is worth recording precisely because it is unusually well-positioned and unusually interested at the same time.

## What it does not show yet

Nothing in it is a measurement of anyone's work, and this record changes no judgement on this page. Keep one distinction the essay itself makes: its claim that chain-of-thought monitorability is diminishing is presented as an evaluation result, not a prediction — if that is right it is a fact about today, and it belongs in a different kind of record than this one, which this site does not yet hold.

## How to verify it yourself

The essay fixes no date for recursive self-improvement, so come back to this page as the measurements beside it are updated. Everything else on it will have moved by then, and that is the only way a forecast ever gets settled — by the record beside it, not by an argument about it.


More: https://flyvolo.ai/llms.txt