Tracking frontier lab hiring velocity (Q1 2026 vs Q2 2026).
The updated Barometer tracks the quarter-over-quarter human job hiring trends across the top AI labs. The logic operates strictly on the principle of obsolescence: if a lab were truly closing in on functional Artificial General Intelligence, their internal demand for human labor would drop. We are noticing exactly this trend begin to materialize at Google DeepMind and xAI, translating to a non-zero probability of AGI imminence. Conversely, OpenAI and Anthropic continue to linearly ramp up human dependency.