The Last AI Built by Humans (submitted Sep 10, revised Sep 15)
Published "The Last AI Built by Humans" (submitted Sep 10, revised Sep 15) — formalizes recursive self-improvement (RSI) in five stages: (1) autonomy in executing improvements, (2) autonomy in improvement strategy, (3) autonomy in acquiring experience, (4) autonomy in adapting to environments, and (5) recursive meta-improvement; diagnoses the limits of current LLMs with a Headroom-Closed Index (HCI). Sets out that the requirements and the expected time of arrival differ across scientific discovery, embodied intelligence and software engineering.
Why it matters
An attempt to break RSI down into stages and make it something to measure rather than a slogan. The theoretical axis of this week's simultaneous cluster of RSI and harness self-improvement papers on arXiv.
Source — Primary sources first; secondary reports are labelled “Press”
Paperarxiv.orghttps://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11873Added in Week 39, 2026 · See that week