Research & models Sep 7, 2026

Trend watch · applied September 6, 2026

A third-party taxonomy, used to slice "which stage of AI R&D is AI actually doing".

Epoch AI, an independent research organization that tracks AI compute and capability trends, recently published a taxonomy of AI R&D work, modeled on the O*NET occupational classification system the US Department of Labor has used for decades. It splits the R&D process into six phases: decide what to work on, design, build, run, analyze, communicate (Epoch AI). On September 6, OpenAI used it to slice its own agents' output: every category grew from January to August, research and infrastructure code still dominates, and the "decide what to work on" phase remains a minimal fraction (OpenAI, 2026-09-06). ⚠️ The taxonomy is third-party; the application and the data are first-party, and the text gives no percentages, only qualitative words. What makes it worth recording is a reusable ruler: the next time someone says "AI is doing research", ask which of the six phases they mean.