Dean W. Ball Newsletter
recursiveautomationimprovement
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From one piece Why I still haven’t bought into true RSI 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
lossy self-improvement remains my baseline on the trajectory of progress, and the increased discussion of extinction risk seems very misplaced
Their words
RSI is poised to make modern LLMs vastly cheaper. Trends that have shown LLMs get exponentially cheaper at a given intelligence are likely to accelerate.
korrents.com
Internal models at top labs are improving faster than public ones and have begun early recursive self-improvement.Their words
Inside Anthropic and OpenAI, internal models are improving even faster. Over the summer there was a step change, as Mythos and Astra started kicking off the early stages of recursive self-improvement (RSI).
Their words
One live possibility is that a deliberately slower pace of releases would still feel like an acceleration from the previous pace of AI improvement
korrents.com
Recursive self-improvement has already started, because AI research itself is now being automated.Their words
OpenAI and Anthropic have entered the RSI era. OpenAI Research Progress Is Accelerating Due To OpenAI Research Progress OpenAI has been opening up lately about many things. The most important issue of all is that of the acceleration and automation of AI R&D.
Their words
If this is only due to gains in capabilities, that is extremely bad news, and it means CoT monitoring is unlikely to survive for another year unless we find a way to actively improve it, and it might not last six months.
korrents.com
The current speed of AI progress could be sustained all the way into recursive self-improvement.Their words
Based on internal results, I have a strong expectation that this speed of progress could be sustained into recursive self-improvement.
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Even without new hardware, the pace of improvement is extremely fast.
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so so yeah, it could be possible now. I think if it's not possible now um it I think it's quite likely to be possible within six months unless there's a dramatic improvement in the security posture
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But you know, sometimes, improvement is only legible when you stop looking for it.
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This is very important because in the abstract, I think everyone says, "Yay, productivity. That's good." What did you think, this was all just vibes? No. Productivity means fewer people to do the same number or the same job. Now, the amount of job you want done may increase, and therefore you get more people, but it also may not.
korrents.com
Letting a robot imagine the next image helps, but it is not essential — the model was surprisingly good without it.Their words
uh the we found that that leads to improvement and we saw in the shirt folding example we saw like a quantitative bump from using that sort of imagination compared to not using it. At the same time I think that the model actually performed surprisingly well without that as well.
korrents.com
There is essentially no cognitive task humans do where AI improvement is failing to transfer at all.Their words
it's really hard for me to think of examples of cognitive tasks humans do where we're not seeing some transfer from AI improving.
Their words
Coding isn't yet another application domain -- it's the meta-skill required for AI to automatically develop its own training material, via symbolic world models. That's how the RSI loop actually kicks off.
From one piece @chamath on X 2 beliefs · x.com
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Looking at the results and capabilities from the various labs over the past few weeks I would say we are firmly in this loop now.
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Recursive self improvement will dramatically increase capability very quickly from here.
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we we kind of have coarse level uh recursive self-improvement already. And the fact that every time you use it, it improves the markdown files. Uh every time you use it, it updates its uh long-term memory.
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Take Eroom’s Law: the number of new drugs approved per dollar of R&D has fallen for decades, even as our scientific tools have grown vastly more powerful, the exact opposite of what the existence of more raw capability would predict.
Intelligence is not the main bottleneckwritingruxandrabio.com
From one piece Harness Engineering for Self-Improvement 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
harness improvement enables better deployment of the model but intelligence is still the core.
Harness Engineering for Self-Improvementlilianweng.github.io
korrents.com
Recursive self-improvement only works if the base model is already capable enough to improve its own mechanism.Their words
Recursive structure alone is not enough. The base model must be capable enough to improve the mechanism.
Harness Engineering for Self-Improvementlilianweng.github.io
korrents.com
A new transit line still benefits riders it diverts from existing lines, not only the new riders it attracts.Their words
Riders diverted from other lines still benefit from the project, especially in a case like QueensLink, where the diverted riders would enjoy an improvement in trip time to Midtown of about 10-15 minutes each way.
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we feel this sense of ownership of products that we rely on every day. And we're angry when they change. Even if they change for the better, we're like angry because we go through life faster because of pattern recognition.
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the joke I made was pre AI, I would spend 95% of my energy thinking about what to do and 5% of my energy doing it. Now I spend 96% of my time thinking about what to do and 4% of my time actually doing it. So yeah, it's like a 20% improvement, but dayto-day it feels as hard as ever.
Their words
I don't love the other methods, which is continuous improvement. The problem with continuous improvement, it… First of all, you should engineer something from first principles at the speed, you know, with speed of light thinking. Limit it only by physical limits, and physics limits. And after that, of course you would improve it over time.
Their words
if improvement stopped you know here the value of an H100 is now predicated on the value that GPD 5.4 four can get out of it instead of the value that GP4 can get out of it and the margins and all that stuff that these labs are doing and they're in a competitive environment so their margins can't go to infinity. Um so you sort of have this like dynamic that is quite interesting in that an H100 is worth more today than it was 3 years ago.
korrents.com
Direct communication with customers matters more than small, incremental product tweaks.Their words
That communication with the customer is more important than minimal, gradual improvement.
korrents.com
Recursive self-improvement has already started, because AI research itself is now being automated.Their words
We are starting to automate AI research and the recursive self-improvement process has begun.
Their words
that work is not being wasted. It's just being stored. You know, it's kind of like complaining about heating an ice cube up a little bit and it not melting yet. It's like, well, you just haven't hit the phase transition. So, but that's where people give up.
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There is a feeling that a lot of tail-chasing in industrial improvement is due to interactions not being recognized.
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the improvement software improvements of really throughput in terms of tokens per dollar per watt that we're able to get uh you know quarter over quarter year over year is massive uh right so it's 5x 10x maybe 40x in some of these cases
korrents.com
Striking down the boring blockers one by one moves retention and activation as visibly as any new feature does.Their words
we literally at some point had a team that would that was called blockers and they just went and one by one struck them down and each time we saw uh improvement in retention, improvement in activation the metrics for as we addressed each one you could literally see the change in the graph.
Their words
there's been no computer improvement up to this date that did not result in more jobs.
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