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  2. Simon Willison — Creator of Datasette; co-creator of Django/

Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-09-10)

  • Simon Willison’s post provides an external perspective on “research acceleration” within OpenAI, specifically highlighting the emergence of “Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI)” as their new AGI.
  • “Agentic engineering” and the use of “coding agents” by OpenAI’s research team have seen a significant surge in 2026, becoming a key driver of internal progress.
  • A “significant acceleration in AI spend per researcher” observed in late July is speculated to be linked to internal employees gaining access to the model later released as “GPT-6 Astra.”