METR study: AI accelerates cyber vulnerability discovery, less so math and AI research
A METR study analyzing AI's impact on cyber, mathematics, and AI research finds major acceleration in cyber vulnerability reporting in 2026 compared to 2025, with notable increases for projects like cURL, OpenSSL, Firefox, and Microsoft, as well as aggregate databases like the US NVD and OSV. The study reports minor acceleration in mathematics research and uncertain effects on AI research itself.
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Import AI (Jack Clark)Jack Clark
Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on arXiv, cappuccinos, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Subscribe now AI is accelerating some types of progress but not others: …A nice METR study lays out where acceleration is showing up… Here’s a little analysis from METR which looks at where AI may be accelerating different types of science and technology. The study looks at three different areas: cyber, math, and AI research, and finds that AI has contributed a lot to cyber, a little bit to math, and it’s hard to say for AI. Where have LLMs actually made a difference to scientific discovery? Cyber vulnerabilities: Major acceleration. “The rate of vulnerabilities reported across many projects has dramatically accelerated in 2026 compared with 2025, both for specific projects (cURL, OpenSSL, Firefox, and Microsoft) and for aggregate vulnerability databases (the US NVD, and OSV)”. Mathematics research: Minor acceleration, b
