superhuman coder
In plain wordsA milestone used by AI forecasters: an AI that can do the coding work of a company's best programmer, far faster and in many copies at once.
A capability milestone defined in the AI 2027AI 2027, prop. n.: A detailed 2025 forecast, written as a month-by-month story, imagining AI becoming superhuman by the end of 2027, with two alternative endings depending on whether humanity slows down. forecasts: an AI that matches the best human programmer at the coding work of AI research while running faster and more cheaply, so that a lab can field it at enormous scale. Operationally, the forecasters set the bar where a leading company, spending 5% of its compute, could run agents numbering thirty times its human research engineers, each thirty times quicker than its best engineer. Coding was chosen because it is a large, measurable share of AI research, so a superhuman coder would sharply accelerate automated AI researchautomated AI research, n.: Using AI systems to do the work of AI researchers, such as running experiments and writing code for new models, so that AI helps build its own successors.; it is the first in the forecast's sequence of milestones, followed by superhuman and then superintelligent AI researchers and artificial superintelligenceartificial superintelligence, n.: Superintelligence in machine form: AI that would outthink the best humans at nearly every intellectual task. Often shortened to ASI and pictured as the stage after human-level AI.. In the April 2025 forecast the two lead forecasters' model-based medians for its arrival were 2027–2028 and their all-things-considered medians 2028 and 2030 (outside forecasters from FutureSearch gave 2033); Lifland lengthened his estimates in May 2025, and the project's December 2025 model put full coding automation about three to five years later than its predecessor.
On their December 2025 model, full coding automation slipped from 2027 to around 2030 or later.
Origin
Defined in the forecasts accompanying AI 2027AI 2027, prop. n.: A detailed 2025 forecast, written as a month-by-month story, imagining AI becoming superhuman by the end of 2027, with two alternative endings depending on whether humanity slows down., published by the AI Futures Project in April 2025, notably the timelines forecast by Eli Lifland, Nikola Jurkovic and FutureSearch.
Related
- AI 2027AI 2027, prop. n.: A detailed 2025 forecast, written as a month-by-month story, imagining AI becoming superhuman by the end of 2027, with two alternative endings depending on whether humanity slows down.
- automated AI researchautomated AI research, n.: Using AI systems to do the work of AI researchers, such as running experiments and writing code for new models, so that AI helps build its own successors.
- AI timelinesAI timelines, n.: Forecasts of when AI will reach major milestones, such as matching humans at most work. People with short timelines expect this within years; others expect decades, or never.
- coding agentcoding agent, n.: An AI agent that writes and fixes software by itself: it reads a codebase, edits files, runs commands and tests, and keeps working until a feature is built or a bug is fixed.
- METR time horizonMETR time horizon, n.: A way of measuring AI progress by asking how long a task — timed by how long it takes a skilled human — an AI agent can complete with even odds of success.
- intelligence explosionintelligence explosion, n.: The idea that once AI gets good enough at improving AI, each smarter version could build a smarter one faster still, so abilities would snowball far beyond human level in a short time.
Sources
- Lifland, E., Jurkovic, N. & FutureSearch (2025). Timelines Forecast. AI 2027 research supplement, AI Futures Project (updated May and December 2025). ai-2027.com/research/timelines-forecast
- Lifland, E., Halstead, B., Kastner, A. & Kokotajlo, D. (2025). AI Futures Timelines and Takeoff Model: Dec 2025 Update. LessWrong, 31 December 2025. greaterwrong.com/posts/YABG5JmztGGPwNFq2/ai-futures-timelines-and-takeoff-model-dec-2025-update
Mentioned in
METR time horizonMETR time horizon, n.: A way of measuring AI progress by asking how long a task — timed by how long it takes a skilled human — an AI agent can complete with even odds of success., AI 2027AI 2027, prop. n.: A detailed 2025 forecast, written as a month-by-month story, imagining AI becoming superhuman by the end of 2027, with two alternative endings depending on whether humanity slows down., automated AI researchautomated AI research, n.: Using AI systems to do the work of AI researchers, such as running experiments and writing code for new models, so that AI helps build its own successors., AI Futures ProjectAI Futures Project, prop. n.: A small nonprofit research group that writes detailed forecasts and scenarios of how advanced AI could develop, best known for the 2025 scenario AI 2027., research tasteresearch taste, n.: The knack good researchers have for choosing worthwhile problems, designing the right experiments and drawing the right conclusions — a skill seen as key to whether AI can do research on its own.