The teaser snippet from James Pethokoukis' Faster Please substack, May 7:
The evidence for recursive AI self-improvement is real. So are the bottlenecks
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:
The road to the Singularity is paved with evermore capable code. (Here, I define the Singularity as a period of utterly transformative economic growth so rapid that the intuitions of standard economics begin to crumble.) Artificial intelligence systems are already highly capable coding assistants. Autonomous engineering agents capable of running experiments, debugging models, and optimizing chips—with limited human supervision—are now emerging and delivering real-world results for at least some business.
Next steps: These systems increasingly turn their attention to AI research itself, each generation helping build the next more quickly than the last. The feedback loop of “recursive self improvement” continues: Better AI begets better AI. No single “Eureka!” breakthrough is required—just compounding acceleration until the tempo of progress becomes difficult to calculate or even comprehend for us carbon-based units.
So where are we on this road, exactly? Is the Singularity still science fiction, or something serious people, such as Washington policymakers, now have to reckon with?
