New paper: looping with model growth improves scaling exponent, matches GPT-3 with 20x less compute

burny_tech · x · 2026-09-19

A new paper challenges the assumption that architectural changes yield only constant-factor gains: looping with model growth improves the scaling exponent, producing compute multipliers that grow exponentially with each OOM of compute.

Steve Hsu frames the RSI angle: if usable computational depth drives the scaling exponent, a model that inspects its residual stream, detects vanishing later-block contributions, and proposes mid-training loop growth plus a refined boundary operator is already performing narrow recursive self-improvement — cheap to code and test, compounding with each cycle. He links it to DeepSeek's mHC, which treats the residual stream as the redesign object via doubly stochastic mixing matrices on the Birkhoff polytope.

Related event: Looped Recursion Improves Scaling Exponents: 7.4B Model Matches GPT-3 13B with 20x Less Compute(6 posts)→

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