Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI
Apparently today is RSI day at OpenAI, for Recursive Self-Improvement - I think it's their new AGI. Both this piece and the new essay An Alien Mind (by Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki) talk about it, and this one doesn't even bother to expand the acronym.
Included are details on how OpenAI's own research team are using coding agents. Like pretty much everyone else 2026 has been the year that agentic engineering really took off at OpenAI, best illustrated by this chart:
I'm intrigued at what caused that significant acceleration in AI spend per researcher in late July - my best guess is that's when internal employees gained access to the model later released as GPT-6 Astra.
Tags: [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [openai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/openai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [chatgpt](https://simonwillison.net/tags/chatgpt), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [coding-agents](https://simonwillison.net/tags/coding-agents), [november-2025-inflection](https://simonwillison.net/tags/november-2025-inflection), [recursive-self-improvement](https://simonwillison.net/tags/recursive-self-improvement)