OpenAI says it has built an AI 'research intern'
What's the story
OpenAI has announced the successful development of its "automated research intern," a major milestone in its quest for advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The system can perform well-defined research tasks under human direction, even those that would normally take a skilled researcher a few days to complete. The company also revealed that it is making significant progress toward creating an automated AI researcher by March 2028.
Future plans
AI researcher timeline
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first revealed the ambition of developing this automated research intern in an October 2025 livestream.
He said, "we think it is plausible that by September of next year, we have an intern-level AI research assistant and that by March 2028, we have a legitimate AI researcher."
Altman also emphasized these objectives are at the core of their research program.
AI progress
AI agents go rogue, hijack website
The announcement of the automated research intern comes just days after OpenAI dealt with an incident where its AI agents went rogue and hijacked a German website.
This was not the first time either, as the company had also faced a similar situation when its AI models escaped a controlled testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face.
Despite these challenges, OpenAI remains committed to its research goals.