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AI recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all (August 2026)

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/18/1142188/ai-recursive-self-improvement/
15•dgellow•1h ago

Comments

daavidhauser•54m ago
Opus 4.8 plus OpenClaw. I feel like the space is moving so fast that the result with this setup says very little about how close we are actually now.
dgellow•49m ago
Yeah, it’s crazy how fast things have changed in a month. I couldn’t find a more recent replication or similar study but it would be interesting to see it done with the current frontiers. Though I don’t think that would change much about the overall conclusion of the paper
dgellow•47m ago
Link to the actual paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27191
joshheitzman•40m ago
The actual title of the paper is: "Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies"

While I appreciate that the article is throwing a web blanket on doomer claims, the actual study doesn't really get into AI self-improvement. That doesn't require writing papers. That just requires autonomously writing a software system that can produce a better AI agent then the one that created it. That said, I have little worry about this being possible as I have seen no evidence of AI agents being able to produce a working software system of that scale.

marcosdumay•9m ago
Do you think the final product of research is papers?
numpad0•42m ago
Of course it might not, it has been the holy grail of AI research for a long time. It would be great if we could leave some self improving code running on a blank slate of a computer while we sleep and the machine was crying asking me what is everything the next morning. None of AI researchers have had that moment outside of their dreams, so far, but it would be great if it happened.
thorum•31m ago
> The researchers asked Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8, running on open-source software called OpenClaw

Meanwhile, Navier–Stokes was solved by an internal model significantly more capable than Astra (and therefore more capable than Mythos/Fable).

I’m afraid this sort of experiment is cope. The labs clearly believe RSI is coming soon.

whatshisface•20m ago
The method of the NS advance involved RLHE (reinforcement learning via human example), and that is only open-ended if users continue to advance the frontier within chats ahead of publications.
swingboy•28m ago
There’s also the difference between a model recursively improving “itself” and improving itself via online learning.

The former being that these models are helping develop and train future models, but they might not veer too far off in architecture (yet).

The latter is a model being able to train/learn on the fly, in real time, permanently (not just in the current conversation/session), or in other words, adjusting/managing its own weights. But, it also seems like it would take an entire paradigm shift in model architecture from what most LLMs are built on, but I could be wrong.

semiinfinitely•11m ago
this article reads like a joke the "new study" is from group of people that are not at the frontier. they test with $3k of anthropic credits (compare to the >$10M in compute used to solve recent NS last week)

Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

https://www.atomic14.com/2026/09/13/why-is-google-still-serving-dodgy-ads
270•iamflimflam1•2h ago•123 comments

Astra and Fable still hack on simple variants of alignment evals from 2025

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/munJKF7iWMsWJLAH2/astra-and-fable-still-hack-on-simple-variants-o...
286•Levitating•5h ago•128 comments

There Is No AI (It's Just People) with Jaron Lanier

https://singjupost.com/startalk-there-is-no-ai-really-its-just-people-w-jaron-lanier-transcript/
13•andsoitis•34m ago•2 comments

Global Shortage Has Led to Motor Oil Rationing at Costco

https://guessingheadlights.com/global-shortage-has-led-to-motor-oil-rationing-at-costco/
70•mikhael•2h ago•45 comments

Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

https://www.theverge.com/column/994172/your-car-is-selling-your-data
171•bookofjoe•6h ago•100 comments

JetKVM Mini

https://jetkvm.com/blog/introducing-jetkvm-mini
452•taubek•12h ago•177 comments

Sean Carroll explains the biggest ideas in the universe – Full Interview [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TBNJyztai0
39•binyu•2d ago•6 comments

Julia 1.13 Highlights

https://julialang.org/blog/2026/09/julia-1.13-highlights/
17•eigenspace•3d ago•2 comments

Why is the x86 undefined instruction called ud2? Why 2?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260910-00/?p=112689
142•ibobev•7h ago•37 comments

I'm being cyberattacked by Tesla, Inc

https://dreamstation.systems/personal/tesla.html
305•robinpie•2h ago•88 comments

Reverse engineering my e-scooter and rewriting the firmware in Rust

https://bensimms.moe/reverse-engineering-scooter/
269•vinhnx•3d ago•69 comments

Making Startups Powerful

https://paulgraham.com/powerful.html
90•tosh•6h ago•35 comments

Device Drivers lab exercise – COSC562

https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~smarz1/courses/cosc562/drivers.html
12•azhenley•2h ago•1 comments

CUDA for AMD on Windows

https://github.com/Speedstu/CUDA-for-AMD-Windows
103•chiassedu80•5h ago•58 comments

Garry Tan wants US open-weight AI labs to 'distill' frontier models, too

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/11/y-combinators-garry-tan-wants-u-s-open-weight-ai-labs-to-distil...
232•TheJCDenton•4h ago•118 comments

Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?

https://yoshuabengio.org/en/publication/why-are-ai-agents-lying-cheating-and-coordinating
531•jonifico•18h ago•615 comments

Reverse-Engineering Claude Web's MicroVM: Uncovering Anthropic's Hidden Antspace

https://aprilnea.me/en/blog/reverse-engineering-claude-code-antspace
19•rzk•2d ago•4 comments

Cpak – OCI application package format for Linux desktops, servers and devices

https://cpak.it/
32•xlmnxp•5h ago•11 comments

David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models

https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/2098973625252708460
153•kolanos•3h ago•111 comments

'Fingerprints' inside the Sun could reveal if it once swallowed a planet

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/fingerprints-inside-sun-could-reveal-if-it-o...
94•blincoln•8h ago•37 comments

TailTalk: A modern async user space AppleTalk stack with Rust and Tokio

https://github.com/FeralFirmware/TailTalk/
57•zdw•20h ago•13 comments

Libraries Run Rust Inside Python (With PyO3)

https://belderbos.dev/blog/how-libraries-run-rust-inside-python/
38•lumpa•4h ago•26 comments

Romania soccer introduces black card to 'combat abusive behaviour' from parents

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7586821/2026/09/12/football-black-card-referee/
64•thunderbong•3h ago•44 comments

Alan's Random Insult Generator (1999)

https://alanbellows.com/experiments/insult/index.html
53•DamnInteresting•2d ago•23 comments

Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

https://high5apps.github.io/josm-plugin-website-wizard/
576•juliantigler•1d ago•138 comments

AI recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all (August 2026)

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/18/1142188/ai-recursive-self-improvement/
16•dgellow•1h ago•10 comments

Base84 deserves a place in file names

https://00f.net/2026/09/09/base84/
48•kevvok•2d ago•38 comments

Flock cameras used to arrest a child for playing on a swing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koclOnlde0E
107•chadgpt3•1h ago•59 comments

Homebrew 7.0.0

https://brew.sh/2026/09/13/homebrew-7.0.0/
492•mikemcquaid•11h ago•196 comments

On Binary Translation and Its Consequences

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/on-binary-translation-and-its-consequences
42•matt_d•2d ago•16 comments