The piece opens with Jack Good’s old “intelligence explosion” idea: once a machine becomes smart enough to improve itself, it could enter a runaway feedback loop and rapidly exceed human intelligence. The article frames this as AI’s “holy grail,” because whoever reaches it first—company or country—could gain a massive strategic lead. #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖
The US side is represented mainly by Anthropic, which says its newer models, including Mythos, are edging closer to recursive self-improvement. Anthropic has also warned about the risks of losing control once this becomes real, and has floated the idea that the world may need the option to temporarily pause AI development. The article notes that critics see some of these warnings as possibly self-serving hype.
The China side is framed around rising interest in “self-evolution.” Luo Fuli, lead developer of Xiaomi’s MiMo model, reportedly told China’s Zhongguancun Forum that self-evolution will be one of AI’s biggest trends over the next year. Her claim is that developers are starting to see an “implementable and actionable path” toward AI models improving themselves. #(Cool) Dev
The geopolitical point: recursive self-improvement could intensify the China–US tech war. If AI systems can automate more of AI research—model design, data generation, evaluation, coding, debugging, experiment planning—then the race becomes less about one model release and more about who can build the fastest self-reinforcing R&D loop. #Topic of War
scmp.com/tech/tech-war/ar..
