[{"authors":["Yi Duan","Ying Liu","Zirui Tang","Haodong Chen","Jun Zhou","Yumou Liu","Bangrui Xu","Yukai Wu","Sidi Chen","Yuhan Zhou","Haoyu Wang","Xiaoyou Yu","Shaokun Han","Xuzhou Zhu","Le Zhou","Bolin Lu","Wei Zhou","Jiachen Liu","Nuozhou Fang","Jiaxin Tian","Ruoyu Chen","Yuxuan Li","Kai Zuo","Kaiyan Zhang","Jiantao Qiu","Conghui He","Guoliang Li","Bowen Zhou","Zhiyuan Liu","Zhoufutu Wen","Jihua Kang","Xuanhe Zhou","Fan Wu"],"description":"Which responsibilities in the improvement loop are controlled by AI, and which changes are inherited?","extraction_review":{"notes":"Checked against original source; not human review or independent experimental replication.","reviewed_at":"2026-09-26T05:09:03Z","reviewer":"Codex","status":"agent_checked"},"id":"duan-2026","methodology_notes":"The B0–L5 taxonomy is Duan et al.’s analytical lens, not a settled universal definition. Other taxonomies exist, including Weco’s outcome-focused four-level framework, which is not numerically interchangeable. Assignments depend on system boundary and inherited mechanism. Greater autonomy does not imply greater capability, safety, reliability or efficiency. Bounded mechanism demonstrations do not establish unconstrained autonomy. Capability results and autonomy assessments remain separate. Structural L5 requires a changed improvement mechanism to be created, retained, inherited and invoked later. Effective L5 additionally requires better subsequent improvements under comparable budgets and independent assessment. Repeated gains alone do not establish acceleration.","name":"B0–L5 autonomy framework","publication_date":{"precision":"day","value":"2026-09-10"},"publication_status":"published","slug":"duan-2026","source_refs":[{"locator":"Supplied v1, §§3.1–3.7; Figure 9 p.36; §§4.1–4.4","source_id":"src-duan-v1"},{"locator":"Alternative outcome-focused taxonomy; its numbered labels are not equivalent to Duan B0–L5.","source_id":"src-weco-taxonomy"}],"version":"Supplied arXiv:2609.11873v1"}]