Researcher Uplift from Code Output

Thomas Kwa (METR) translates Anthropic's reported 8× code-per-engineer-per-day into serial researcher uplift with production functions: Cobb-Douglas gives U = M^β = √8 ≈ 2.83, CES stays within ±3% of that across elasticities because 8 ≈ e², and a low-stakes-code-discounted model still lands [2.33, 2.66] — so researcher uplift from coding agents alone is plausibly >2×, reconciled with Anthropic's 'well short of 2× overall R&D uplift' because R&D speedup also depends on compute (Greenblatt: labor^0.55 × compute^0.45)