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Public story · 2026-08-25 · high
Math sped up too, with arXiv submissions doubling in some subfields, plus new results on the Jacobian conjecture and Green's Problem 44.
Why now: The comparison, 2026 against 2025, appeared in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter on August 24.
Vulnerability discovery sped up in 2026 across cURL, OpenSSL, Firefox, Microsoft, the US NVD and OSV. That comparison against 2025 comes from a METR analysis in the August 24 issue of Import AI.
Security teams evaluating AI-assisted vulnerability triage now have a real 2026 data point to weigh. Anyone counting on the same models to out-optimize hand-tuned systems doesn't.
The same analysis found zero measurable acceleration across seven optimization benchmarks, a different kind of task than fixing a bug in existing code. They cover CIFAR-10, Hutter compression, Gurobi MIP, MIPLIB, nanoGPT, Stockfish and the matrix-multiplication exponent.
Math moved too. arXiv submissions doubled in some subfields, and the analysis credits AI-assisted work toward the Jacobian conjecture and Green's Problem 44.
Jack Clark, who covered the analysis, reads the split as per-skill phase changes, not one smooth industry-wide lift. Coding jumped in 2025. Cybersecurity jumped in 2026. Optimization hasn't had its turn.
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Anthropic partners with Microsoft / Shared entities / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Anthropic partners with Microsoft); both cover Import AI, Jack Clark; overlapping topics (against, clark).
Anthropic partners with Microsoft / Shared entities / Shared topic / Earlier coverage
Linked by a graph relationship (Anthropic partners with Microsoft); both cover Jacobian, LLMs; overlapping topics (against, conjecture).
Anthropic partners with Microsoft / Shared entities / Earlier coverage / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Anthropic partners with Microsoft); both cover Import AI, Jack Clark; earlier Import AI coverage from 2026-06-08.
Microsoft supports MCP / Shared entities / Earlier coverage / Tension
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Microsoft released Copilot / Shared entity: LLMs / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension
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Microsoft supports MCP / Shared entity: Microsoft / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension
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Microsoft competes with OpenAI / Shared entity: Microsoft / Shared topic / Earlier coverage / Tension
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Microsoft competes with OpenAI / Shared entities / Earlier coverage
Linked by a graph relationship (Microsoft competes with OpenAI); both cover Jack Clark, Microsoft; earlier Jack Clark coverage from 2026-08-03.