What Nathan Lambert thinks about recursive self-improvement

@nathan-lambert · 55 positions · On ppll ↗

Machine-learning researcher on open language models; writes the Interconnects newsletter and the RLHF Book, after leading post-training at Ai2.

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Only Nathan Lambert on recursive self-improvement. See everyone on recursive self-improvement

2 dated positions, 2025 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Nathan Lambert has said — not written or endorsed by them.

2 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

1. 19 Sept 2026

   Our readingRecursive self-improvement in AI will mainly make existing model capability cheaper rather than raise peak intelligence.

   LLMs

   Their wordsRSI is poised to make modern LLMs vastly cheaper. Trends that have shown LLMs get exponentially cheaper at a given intelligence are likely to accelerate.

   ↗Why I still haven’t bought into true RSIinterconnects.ai 2nd of 3 in this piece

2. 19 months earlier

3. 3 Feb 2025

   Our readingAI takeover is not the thing to worry about: physical constraints bound recursive self-improvement, and humans reliably act once a risk becomes immediate.

   AGI

   Their wordsAnd for that reason, there's physical constraints to things like AGI, like recursive improvement to kill us all type stuff. For the physical reasons and for how humans have figured things out before, I'm not too worried about AI takeover.

   ↗DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters | Lex Fridman Podcast #459youtube.com 43rd of 44 in this recording