2026-10-20 / Signal #7
OpenAI says it can now migrate the COBOL still running 40% of banks
“The people who still understand the bank are retiring. The model just passed the exam.”
The Story
OpenAI published new evals showing GPT-6-family models jumping from 5.4% to 86.6% accuracy on a COBOL migration test (97.9% at high effort), with similar leaps on Fortran and Visual Basic. The company notes that about 40% of the world’s banks still run COBOL, the programmers are aging out, and production migrations still need expert review because a “helpful” rewrite can silently change money math.
Why It Matters
The last human COBOL caste vs. a model that finally speaks the temple language. Old-office lore, money, institutions. Distinct from the already-covered “banks lock agents out of accounts.
Evidence
OpenAI research post (Oct 19); Engadget
Sources
Daily scan: 2026-10-20