Anthropic Finds Researchers Use Claude Mostly for Data Analysis

Anthropic analyzed 207,000 Claude and Claude Code research sessions using privacy preserving methods, according to a company research report. The study found that relative to the number of researchers in each field, Claude is used more in computer science, mathematics and statistics than in health and laboratory based physical sciences.

Data analysis accounted for about one third of Claude sessions and nearly half of Claude Code sessions. Writing was also a common use, while idea generation and data gathering appeared less often even though surveyed scientists rank those tasks as the most important for scientific discovery.

Tasks in the top 20% of Anthropic's AI capability measure received two to four times more Claude use than researchers' time allocation would predict. A scenario model in the study estimated that broad adoption of current AI capabilities could double research output in some fields. If AI could carry out all non-physical research work, output in computer science and statistics could rise as much as 15-fold, while chemistry and biology, held back by physical bottlenecks, would rise three- or fourfold. About 40% of surveyed researchers who actively use AI expect models to conduct full research projects by 2030.