AI is speeding up while New Zealand waits for a government

New Zealand's next government should prioritise addressing the risks of advanced AI, says Good Ancestors New Zealand, after an independent assessment found that one of the world's leading AI companies, Anthropic, is likely improving its models at around twice its previous rate. METR judged that most of that speed-up is likely coming from the company's own use of AI.

On 5 November the AI evaluation non-profit METR published its assessment of research and development at Anthropic, based on 11 weeks of access to the company's internal data and staff. It found Anthropic is "likely improving the capabilities of their models on well-specified tasks at around twice the rate" it did between March 2024 and October 2025.

METR found no evidence of significant bottlenecks to further progress over the next 12 months and warned of "a significant risk" that progress could speed up further. METR says its estimate carries high uncertainty, and it would not be surprised if the true rate were anywhere from 1.3 to 3 times the historical rate. Anthropic also redacted a majority of the evidence METR found most informative.

The finding comes two months after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI developers to "pace the frontier" by deliberately slowing the pace at which companies improve the capabilities of AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk publicly agreed. Amodei said slowing down would need coordination across the industry and support from governments.

Good Ancestors Executive Director Dan Foote says the assessment puts independent numbers on the acceleration the companies themselves have warned about.

"In September the people running the world's leading AI companies said the improvement of leading models needed to slow down. An independent assessment now suggests at least one of them is improving at around twice its previous pace, and that AI is likely the main reason for that speed-up."

Foote says New Zealand does not yet have the institutional arrangements in place to handle this pace of change.

"When AI is used to speed up its own development, the time governments have to understand and respond to the risks gets shorter. The most serious of those risks could be catastrophic and New Zealand needs to be better prepared to tackle them."

New Zealand has a caretaker government until a new government is formed. After the 2023 election, that process took around six weeks. This time the official result, including special votes, is due on 27 November and serious coalition negotiations are expected to begin after that.

Under caretaker conventions, Ministers avoid significant new policy decisions until a government is formed. Officials are, however, preparing briefings for incoming Ministers. Good Ancestors is calling for those briefings to set out the risks from advanced AI and the options for responding, including a New Zealand AI Safety Institute and a national AI Safety Strategy.

"We are not asking New Zealand to slow its use of AI. Whoever forms the next government will inherit a technology that is moving faster than it was a year ago and could have transformative impacts on New Zealand in this term of government. The preparation should start now, so the next government can act in its first weeks," says Foote.