Missedeconomy

In 2025, the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies

by Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) · called 2025-01

Missed · called by Dec 2025

3 receiptsOpen verificationClose▾

Missed

Documented production deployments of autonomous agents with material output impact6:1 interactive AI agent hours to employee hours at Anthropic (frontier-adopter case study) (as of 2026-08)

Verified blind: GLM-5.2 + Grok — agree

How it's graded

Met if by end of 2025 autonomous AI agents are deployed in real companies doing economically material work (documented output changes), beyond copilots and chat assistants; failed if agent deployments remain pilots without material output impact

Documented production deployments of autonomous agents with material output impact1 measured point

6:1interactive AI agent hours to employee hours at Anthropic (frontier-adopter case study)as of 2026-08

A single reading is not yet a trajectory. The figure appears once a second measurement lands.

Table view

As of	Measured (interactive AI agent hours to employee hours at Anthropic (frontier-adopter case study))	Receipt
2026-08	6:1	source

Receipts · 3

We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies.
Sam Altman — Reflections (blog) archived↗context · not model-verified · 2025-01
best AI agents are not currently able to carry out substantive projects by themselves or directly substitute for human labor.
METR — Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks archived↗ · 2025-03-19
The 95% failure rate for enterprise AI solutions
Fortune — MIT NANDA report on GenAI pilots archived↗ · 2025-08-18

Ledger history

2026-07-15: Target date 2025-12 is past. Two recognized-domain measurements confirm AI agents did not materially change company output: METR (metr.org, measurement) states agents cannot carry out substantive…
2026-10-22: Verdict 'wrong' remains correct: the 2025-12 deadline passed without documented broad agent deployments materially changing company output (METR measured in March 2025 that agents could not…

Every verdict on the ledger is graded against dated, archived third-party evidence and blind-verified by two independent models.

CiteAI Forecast Ledger, “AI agents join the workforce in 2025” (Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO), 2025-01), https://aiforecastledger.com/claims/altman-agents-join-workforce-2025.html, last reviewed 2026-10-22. CC BY 4.0.