Research

Borrowing the L1–L5 scale from self-driving cars, we ignore implementation details and look only at outcomes and the division of labor between humans and AI. The result is five levels, AL1 to AL5: code completion, conversational Q&A, a collaborator that explores on its own, a leader that proposes solutions beyond expert level, and a fully autonomous system with no human involved.

Long-running AI agents can produce more code and research than we can absorb. That output extends our capacity, but it does not automatically become our knowledge, judgment, or ability.