{"id":238896,"date":"2026-06-13T10:11:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T15:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/recursive-self-improvement"},"modified":"2026-06-13T10:11:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T15:11:40","slug":"recursive-self-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/recursive-self-improvement","title":{"rendered":"Recursive Self Improvement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t7_ZXgfJVG8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Computer, load up celery man.<br \/> Can AI build AI? Yes, and it already is. Sort of. I showcase the ability of AI agents like claude code to perform AI research, to build and optimize machine learning algorithms. I put various state-of-the-art LLMs like claude Mythos\/Fable into an endless recursive research loop and have them build a neural network that learns the shape of the mandelbrot set. It is inspired by Andrej Karpathy\u2019s autoresearch. While we watch this loop, I express my thoughts on the concept of recursive self improvement, arguing that it is possible, hard, and dangerous.<br \/> Sorry for the bitrate issues.<\/p>\n<p>Fractalsearch repo: coming soon!<\/p>\n<p>~SUPPORT ME~<br \/> Learn to code faster with Scrimba! (saves you 20% and support me): <a href=\"https:\/\/scrimba.com\/?via=EmergentGarden\">https:\/\/scrimba.com\/?via=EmergentGarden<\/a>.<br \/> Patreon: \/ emergentgarden.<br \/> Twitter: \/ max_romana.<br \/> Bluesky: <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/emergentgard\">https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/emergentgard<\/a>\u2026 Autoreasearch: <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/karpathy\/autoresearch\">https:\/\/github.com\/karpathy\/autoresearch<\/a> Mandelbrot Zoom: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \u2022 Mandelbrot World Record Attempt \u2014 Part 1 (\u2026 Celery Man: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \u2022 Tim and Eric \u2014 Celery Man Karpathy\u2019s Youtube: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/andrejkarpathy\">@andrejkarpathy<\/a> Self-building Cranes: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \u2022 How Tower Cranes Build Themselves Darwin-Godel Machine: <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2505.22954\">https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2505.22954<\/a> Hashgrid Paper: <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2201.05989\">https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2201.05989<\/a> Anthropic\u2019s RSI Article: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/institute\/r\">https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/institute\/r<\/a>\u2026 Fable System Card: <a href=\"https:\/\/www-cdn.anthropic.com\/d00db56\">https:\/\/www-cdn.anthropic.com\/d00db56<\/a>\u2026 My Music Guy: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/acolyte\">@acolyte<\/a>-compositions \u201cEquatorial Complex\u201d Kevin MacLeod <a href=\"http:\/\/(incompetech.com\">(incompetech.com<\/a>) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/b\">http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/b<\/a>\u2026 ~TIMESTAMPS~ (0:00) Recursive Self Improvement (3:14) fractalsearch (9:56) RSI is Possible (15:03) RSI is Hard (21:52) RSI is Dangerous (26:03) Results (28:28) Cost (29:29) Takeoff.<\/p>\n<p>~SOURCES~<br \/> Autoreasearch: <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/karpathy\/autoresearch\">https:\/\/github.com\/karpathy\/autoresearch<\/a>.<br \/> Mandelbrot Zoom: \u2022 Mandelbrot World Record Attempt \u2014 Part 1 (\u2026<br \/> Celery Man: \u2022 Tim and Eric \u2014 Celery Man.<br \/> Karpathy\u2019s Youtube: \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/andrejkarpathy\">@andrejkarpathy<\/a>.<br \/> Self-building Cranes: \u2022 How Tower Cranes Build Themselves.<br \/> Darwin-Godel Machine: <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2505.22954\">https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2505.22954<\/a><br \/> Hashgrid Paper: <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2201.05989\">https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2201.05989<\/a><br \/> Anthropic\u2019s RSI Article: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/institute\/r\">https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/institute\/r<\/a>\u2026<br \/> Fable System Card: <a href=\"https:\/\/www-cdn.anthropic.com\/d00db56\">https:\/\/www-cdn.anthropic.com\/d00db56<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>My Music Guy: \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/acolyte\">@acolyte<\/a>-compositions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Computer, load up celery man. Can AI build AI? Yes, and it already is. Sort of. I showcase the ability of AI agents like claude code to perform AI research, to build and optimize machine learning algorithms. I put various state-of-the-art LLMs like claude Mythos\/Fable into an endless recursive research loop and have them build [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,42,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-media-arts","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}