There was a newsletter this week from one of the co-founders of Anthropic that's worth knowing about.
His take: there's a 60%+ chance that AI will be fully running its own research and development, with no human involvement, by end of 2028. That's based on what's already happening!
Claude Opus recently scored 95.5% on a test that measures whether AI can independently reproduce published research.
AI also hit a 52x speedup on a model training task that used to take engineering teams months.
OpenAI has publicly said they want an automated AI research system running by September 2026.
The short version, AI tools are improving faster than most people realize, and that pace is accelerating.
What this means for EAs and Chiefs of Staff
BCG published a report this spring looking at 165 million jobs. Their finding was that 50-55% of US jobs will be changed by AI within 2-3 years (Changed, not eliminated . The people who adapt are the ones who come out ahead.
For EAs and CoS, this is actually useful context. The tools available to you in 2027 will be significantly more capable than what you're using today. If you're already building workflows and using AI regularly, you'll know how to use those tools when they arrive. If you're not, you'll be starting from scratch at a point when the baseline has moved.
The practical takeaway:
Pick one workflow this week and figure out how to automate part of it
Your meeting debrief
Your weekly exec brief
Your inbox triage
Something with a predictable structure that you do repeatedly. Start there, then build the next one.
Every Wednesday inside The Operating System, I break down one workflow like this with the exact tools, prompts, and setup. Step-by-step, ready to use the same day.