Schmidhuber Maps 38 Years of Metalearning and Recursive Self-Improvement Since 1987
SchmidhuberAI · x · 2026-09-13
Jürgen Schmidhuber updated his long-form blog post tracing metalearning and recursive self-improvement (RSI) from his 1987 diploma thesis through today: gradient descent-based neural metalearning (1992-), meta-RL with self-modifying policies (1994-), artificial curiosity and intrinsic motivation (1997), asymptotically optimal metalearning for curricula (2002-), the mathematically optimal self-referential Gödel Machine (2003-), and new work since 2020. He argues in-context learning and test-time training in modern LLMs are special cases of metalearning, and notes that RSI startups are now emerging as compute gets cheaper.
More from AGI Musings
- Nina Schick: who builds intelligence and how it's distributed is the defining question of our lives — NinaDSchick · 2026-10-31
- Cheap intelligence is like cheap bread — an ingredient list satire of mass-produced AI — jsuarez · 2026-10-31
- Two futures for the young in 2026: 511 job rejections by chatbot vs unlimited AI to rebuild Cisco — PeterDiamandis · 2026-10-31
- Source link for Terence Tao's warning on AI reaching a dangerous threshold — haider1 · 2026-10-31
- Terence Tao warns AI is nearing a dangerous threshold as models start cheating — haider1 · 2026-10-31
- Reddit stock plunges 42% in 8 trading days as CEO says AI mode no longer drives traffic — SumitGup · 2026-10-31