By how much, if at all, will AI boost the U.S. economy? New research by Anthropic, seen exclusively by TIME in advance of its release today, offers at least a partial answer to that question. By studying aggregated data about how people use Claude in the course of their work, Anthropic researchers came up with an estimate for how much AI could contribute to annual labor productivity growth--an important contributor to the total level of growth in the overall economy--as the technology becomes more widely used. Their answer: current-generation AI models could increase the U.S. annual labor productivity growth rate by 1.8%--doubling the average rate of growth since 2019. Assuming that labor makes up 60% of total productivity in the economy, and that AI reaches full diffusion in a decade's time, "this implies an overall total factor productivity increase of 1.1% per year," the researchers write.

Welcome back to, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? What to Know: Testing LLMs' ability to control a robot A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in this newsletter about my visit to Figure AI, a California startup that has developed a humanoid robot. Billions of dollars are currently pouring into the robotics industry, based on the belief that rapid AI progress will mean the creation of robots with "brains" that can finally deal with the messy complexities of the real world. Today, I want to tell you about an experiment that calls that theory into question.

She's sitting on a purple armchair, nodding slowly as she talks. "When was the last time you felt really happy?" Her voice is low and measured, with the gently broken glottal quality that one might expect of a computer simulation, her ethnicity undefined, her cardigan beige. Ellie, an artificial intelligence therapist created with funding from the US government agency responsible for the development of military technologies, is capable of reading 60 non-verbal cues a second. She wears a watch and a look of blank empathy.

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Scientists pioneering research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston believe stroke victims could see movement improve by up to 15%. The team hopes to develop the robot therapy so it can help the patients regain movement in their hands and wrists, allowing them to perform tasks, such as opening jars, which are often impossible for many stroke victims. At the moment, all patients will do exercises under the instruction of a human physiotherapist to help them regain the use of limbs paralysed by a stroke. However, the response to traditional treatment can sometimes be quite poor. In the US treatment, a patient puts their hand on a robotic joystick, and is repeatedly guided through a series of movements by prompts from a "game" on a video screen.