Policy is eating the world.

We work on risks that cannot be undone.

The lines: how long a task the best AI agent can finish, GPT-2 to today. Data: METR.

As seen on

Perrin Research works on existential risk. Most of the work is on frontier AI.

The evidence

Where things stand.

Frontier AI Safety

4.4x a year

Training compute for notable AI models has grown 4.4 times a year since 2010, about a doubling every six months.

Biosecurity

36of 38 providers

Researchers ordered camouflaged DNA fragments from 38 commercial synthesis providers. 36 shipped fragments of the 1918 influenza virus.

Nature Communications, Jan 2026Ordered with law enforcement's knowledge

Automated Decisions

67%

Two thirds of Medicare Advantage prior-authorisation denials that were appealed in 2025 were overturned.

KFF, Aug 202640% to 93% by insurer

Automated Decisions

<1% appealed

HealthCare.gov insurers denied 19% of in-network claims in 2024. Consumers appealed fewer than 1% of the denials.

KFF, Mar 2026At least 262,982 of about 85m

Cyber and Critical Systems

$820m

Ransomware operators were paid more than $820 million on-chain in 2025, 8% less than in 2024.

Chainalysis, Feb 2026May approach $900m as more is attributed

Cyber and Critical Systems

3,611complaints

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 3,611 ransomware complaints in 2025, with $32m in reported losses.

FBI IC3 Annual Report, 2025The FBI calls the loss figure artificially low

The pace

Frontier AI SafetyHow long a task frontier AI agents can complete, half the timeLength of task, in the time an expert takes (log scale)

Source: METR, Task-Completion Time Horizons of Frontier AI Models, Last updated 8 May 2026. Each point is the state-of-the-art model at its release; confidence intervals are wide.

View the data

	Length of task, in the time an expert takes (log scale)
GPT-2	3 sec
davinci-002	8 sec
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct	36 sec
GPT-4	4 min
GPT-4o	7 min
Claude 3.5 Sonnet	11 min
o1-preview	20 min
o1	39 min
Claude 3.7 Sonnet	1 hr
o3	2 hr
GPT-5	3.4 hr
Claude Opus 4.5	4.9 hr
GPT-5.2	5.9 hr
Claude Opus 4.6	12 hr
Claude Mythos Preview	17 hr