OpenAI and Anthropic Signal Early Recursive Self-Improvement Is Here

This week, both Anthropic and OpenAI gave their clearest signals yet that some form of recursive self-improvement (RSI) is already happening, albeit in an early stage. The observation was first made by Ethan Mollick and echoed by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, sparking an industry-wide debate.

Confirmed

• Dario Amodei said AI progress has been sharply accelerating since this summer, driven by AI increasingly participating in building next-generation AI — "AI building AI."
• Ethan Mollick argued RSI could rapidly boost AI capabilities, and the first company to achieve it may gain an insurmountable lead.
• Google DeepMind Chief Strategy Officer Jasjeet Sekhon said in a Berkeley RDI interview that massive AI infrastructure investment is essentially a bet on recursive self-improvement.

Counterpoints

• Mollick also cautioned that concerns about RSI may be overstated: capabilities may face hard ceilings in compute and architecture; AI-driven research has its own limits (e.g., recognizing which problems are worth solving); and companies may fail to effectively use AI-produced research.
• Even if early RSI is real, it does not automatically lead to an intelligence explosion.

Why it matters

• Two leading labs simultaneously hinting at early RSI is a rare alignment, possibly marking a new phase in AI capability growth.
• If true, the first mover could build an uncatchable moat — the underlying logic of today's infrastructure spending spree.
• But RSI's real-world impact remains constrained by compute, architecture and organizational capacity; an intelligence explosion is not a foregone conclusion, and evidence of AI's actual share in model R&D warrants watching.

2026-09-13 ~ 2026-09-13 · 6 related posts

Full story(4 episodes)→

• Episode 1: Researchers Push Back on Dario Amodei's Claim That RSI Has Begun(2026-09-12, 8 posts)
• Episode 2: OpenAI and Anthropic Signal Early Recursive Self-Improvement Is Here(2026-09-13, 6 posts)
• Episode 3: Google Researcher Argues Intelligence Has a Speed Limit(2026-09-13, 5 posts)
• Episode 4: AI circles hype RSI: intelligence explosion or fear-mongering business(2026-09-15, 2 posts)

• [source] Anthropic CEO warns AI has been advancing 'drastically faster' since summer as AI helps build AI — Polymarket · 2026-09-13
• [source] Mollick: Anthropic and OpenAI's clearest hints yet that some form of recursive self-improvement has been achieved — emollick · 2026-09-13
• Ethan Mollick: RSI May Not Be the Whole Game — AI Research Faces Multiple Caps — emollick · 2026-09-13
• [source] DeepMind Chief Strategist: AI Infrastructure Spending Is a Bet on Recursive Self-Improvement — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-09-13

2 near-duplicate retellings: emollick · RebeccaBellan