Schmidhuber Stakes His Claim as RSI Pioneer

Episode 1 · Schmidhuber traces 40 years of recursive self-improvement and debunks Google RSI claims (2026-09-13, 2 posts)

Jürgen Schmidhuber updated a long-form blog post tracing meta-learning and recursive self-improvement back to his 1987 thesis, and cited this history to rebut speculation that Google has just 'cracked' RSI while rivals push doom narratives to regulators.

• Schmidhuber Maps 38 Years of Metalearning and Recursive Self-Improvement Since 1987 — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-13
• Schmidhuber maps 40 years of recursive self-improvement, dismissing claims Google just cracked RSI — burny_tech · 2026-09-14

Episode 2 · Schmidhuber Claims Priority: First Concrete RSI Algorithm Dates to 1987 (2026-09-17, 10 posts)

On September 17, Jürgen Schmidhuber posted a series of messages alongside technical note "Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) Since 1987" (IDSIA-9-26), systematically reviewing his roughly four decades of RSI research and explicitly claiming he published the first concrete recursive self-improvement algorithm back in 1987. The priority claim draws attention as RSI becomes an industry buzzword.

Confirmed

• Schmidhuber released technical note IDSIA-9-26 summarizing his RSI work since 1987, including early efforts from 1994 onward such as self-modifying policies.
• He stated that when he published the 1987 work, compute was roughly 100 million times more expensive than today (another post says on the order of a million times).
• He distinguished I. J. Good's 1965/1966 informal "intelligence explosion" conjecture—which offered no concrete algorithm—from his own 1987 thesis work applying genetic programming to itself, recursively evolving better GP methods with multiple meta-levels, which he calls the first concrete RSI algorithm.
• He listed the follow-up lineage: gradient-descent-based RSI in neural networks from 1992, and 1993 work solving the neural-network self-reference problem.
• A user researching RSI with ChatGPT found it identified Schmidhuber's 1993 work as the first true self-modifying, self-improving algorithm, calling him AI's most brilliant yet most cursed researcher; Schmidhuber personally reshared the discussion.
• He noted The New York Times recently covered RSI, involving his former PhD student Louis Kirsch and Kirsch's new company Inherent Labs.
• He argued RSI now drives both software AI and physical AI, and stressed in a long report discussion that self-improvement must not remain software-only: real AI requires physical machines and robots—no mastery of the physical world, no ASI.

Why it matters

• RSI is among the hottest directions in AI today, tied directly to superintelligence debates; Schmidhuber's historical account supplies an early academic lineage.
• Louis Kirsch's Inherent Labs signals the shift from academia to commercialization, with NYT coverage marking mainstream visibility.
• His stance that hardware beyond software self-improvement is required extends the RSI narrative into robotics and physical AI, echoing the embodied-AI boom.
• Known for asserting historical priority, Schmidhuber's concentrated posting reads as a claim over the concept's provenance—offering a first-hand (though partly self-serving) view of the field's genealogy.

• Schmidhuber: I published the first concrete RSI algorithms in 1987, now RSI is driving AI's future — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber Publishes 40-Year Retrospective on Recursive Self-Improvement Since 1987 — rbhar90 · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber plugs paper concretizing I.J. Good's 1966 intelligence explosion via concrete RSI algorithms — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber claims first concrete RSI algorithm dates to his 1987 thesis — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• NYT covers recursive self-improvement; Schmidhuber's ex-student founds Inherent Labs — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber: no ASI without self-improving hardware and mastery of the real world — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber confirms he solved neural self-reference back in 1993 — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber: RSI algorithms date back to 1987, new technical report released — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-17
• Schmidhuber: I published the first concrete RSI algorithms back in 1987 — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-18
• Schmidhuber says he published the first concrete RSI algorithms back in 1987 — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-18

Episode 3 · Schmidhuber Reasserts He Published First Recursive Self-Improvement Algorithm in 1987 (2026-09-19, 2 posts)

Jürgen Schmidhuber cited his new technical report and a CNN interview to reassert priority over recursive self-improvement, claiming he published the first concrete RSI algorithm in 1987, and criticized 'AI stepfathers' for re-publishing ideas without citing original authors.

• Schmidhuber claims Recursive Self-Improvement algorithms date back to his 1987 work, slams 'AI stepfathers' — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-19
• Schmidhuber: I published the first concrete RSI algorithms back in 1987 — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-19