> But our models make it clear that such an [intelligence] explosion may not follow if there are diminishing returns (“ideas become harder to find”) or if feedback loops become bottlenecked.
How is this not obvious to everyone? As we advance it becomes more difficult to advance. You obviously make most advancements around the things that are easiest to improve. Then all the easy things are done. So you go onto the next easiest things. They're "the easy things" from that standpoint but that doesn't mean they aren't harder than "the easy things" when you started. Complexity increases as precision increases.
That RSI can be bottlenecked? I guess this is obvious to many people. Whether RSI will be bottlenecked (at some not very interesting stage) is another question.
Because everyone's thinking around intelligence is incredibly muddled by a variety of factors, and no one is particularly motivated to actually correct anyone's mistaken notions on the matter.
I'm conflicted. On one hand I think we should more openly call people idiots and push back. On the other hand there's Descartes argument for idiots in good company.
I just wish all the people that claimed to care only about truth would actually care about truth. Feels like society is more that trope where someone says a joke to a crowd and no one hears it except one charismatic person who repeats it and gets all the laughs. In reality it feels like the repeated version of the joke doesn't even make sense, it is just vibes.
"We make a tentative calibration of the self-sustaining ac
celeration condition using the existing data that is available, measuring AI capabilities using the Epoch Capabilities Index (Ho et al., 2025).
We find that the condition is met if a one-unit increase in AI model capabilities results in at least 15% higher AI R&D pro ductivity.
A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation based on reported AI engineer uplift
suggests this return has been around 9% since the launch of coding agents.
This number is below the model-implied threshold, suggesting we are not experiencing a self-sustaining acceleration."
And the source of this data seems to be self-reported productivity gains from
surveys: 1.4–2X in METR’s survey of technical workers (Becker, 2026).
A bit flimsy basis but an interesting paper nonetheless.
RSI isn't anything new though; computers have been used to make computers better for about 80 years now.
Imagine having a secretary who could read 1 million records and give you back your answer in 100 microseconds, for just 10 cents an hour. That's Postgres.
So I'd imagine that if R&D can be automated, everything becomes better and cheaper but we'd all lose our jobs, as secretaries did to postgres. UBI season
> Imagine having a secretary who could read 1 million records and give you back your answer in 100 microseconds, for just 10 cents an hour. That's Postgres.
Well, that secretary can only answer very specific questions in a rather peculiar format.
> [...] but we'd all lose our jobs, as secretaries did to postgres.
I doubt many secretaries were replaced by postgres.
When I hear recursive self improvement all I remember are the ridiculous articles a few years ago about how 3d printers were going to make themselves and take over the world.
Reminder that while there are many naysayers who have been on the wrong side of AGI development progress the last decade…
There are two $1T companies who are all-in on RSI internally right now. They are supported by $20T of market cap plowing R&D into their efforts. You can think it’s dumb money at your own peril, however the market rewards intelligent allocation…
The market can also be quick and brutal to punish mistakes, especially when leverage is high. We can be in 1998, but we can be in 1995; you stand to make a ton of money if you know which one we’re in
That RSI can be bottlenecked? I guess this is obvious to many people. Whether RSI will be bottlenecked (at some not very interesting stage) is another question.
Because everyone's thinking around intelligence is incredibly muddled by a variety of factors, and no one is particularly motivated to actually correct anyone's mistaken notions on the matter.
I just wish all the people that claimed to care only about truth would actually care about truth. Feels like society is more that trope where someone says a joke to a crowd and no one hears it except one charismatic person who repeats it and gets all the laughs. In reality it feels like the repeated version of the joke doesn't even make sense, it is just vibes.
We find that the condition is met if a one-unit increase in AI model capabilities results in at least 15% higher AI R&D pro ductivity.
A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation based on reported AI engineer uplift suggests this return has been around 9% since the launch of coding agents.
This number is below the model-implied threshold, suggesting we are not experiencing a self-sustaining acceleration."
And the source of this data seems to be self-reported productivity gains from surveys: 1.4–2X in METR’s survey of technical workers (Becker, 2026).
A bit flimsy basis but an interesting paper nonetheless.
Imagine having a secretary who could read 1 million records and give you back your answer in 100 microseconds, for just 10 cents an hour. That's Postgres.
So I'd imagine that if R&D can be automated, everything becomes better and cheaper but we'd all lose our jobs, as secretaries did to postgres. UBI season
Well, that secretary can only answer very specific questions in a rather peculiar format.
> [...] but we'd all lose our jobs, as secretaries did to postgres.
I doubt many secretaries were replaced by postgres.
However, you might like reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_record_equipment
It's important to recognize that LLMs accelerating development of LLMs does not imply it will lead to self-sustaining acceleration.
There are two $1T companies who are all-in on RSI internally right now. They are supported by $20T of market cap plowing R&D into their efforts. You can think it’s dumb money at your own peril, however the market rewards intelligent allocation…