# Recursive Self-Improvement May Become the Most Valuable Use of Frontier Tokens by Alexander Wissner-Gross > Recursive self-improvement may become the highest-value use of a frontier laboratory’s own tokens. If stronger models generate more future value than outside applications, socially valuable work can lose compute to the development of the next model generation. > **— Adapted from Alexander Wissner-Gross**, *Moonshots, October 7, 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Recording and precise locator:** [32:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRdb8UmPnh0&t=1923s) — *The Fight Over Claude's Consciousness, AI's 1942 Moment, & Why Altman Says "Accept Some Bad Things"*, Moonshots, October 7, 2026. - **Exact reconciled source excerpt:** “We’re probably past the point from several months ago, if not earlier, where the highest-revenue—or at least highest future-discounted-revenue—per-token application of current frontier models in the frontier labs is to develop, via recursive self-improvement, even stronger models.” - **Editorial status:** The poster is explicitly labeled **Adapted from** because it consolidates spoken context into a self-contained proposition. It must not be represented as verbatim speech. Numerical claims, forecasts, legal interpretations, and claims about current organizations remain the speaker’s assertions unless separately verified. - **Reconciled source dossier:** [[research/All Things Superintelligence Research - The Coming Manhattan Project - Moonshots|All Things Superintelligence Research — The Coming Manhattan Project — Moonshots]] preserves broadcast order, speaker attribution, timing, and the source-fidelity boundary. - **Preparation ledger:** [[research/All Things Superintelligence Research - The Coming Manhattan Project - Moonshots - Reminder and Wiki Preparation|Reminder and Wiki Preparation]] records candidate 11, its mechanism, evidence posture, and misreading risks. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Wiki source hub:** [[wiki/Moonshots - The Coming Manhattan Project|Moonshots — The Coming Manhattan Project]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Alexander Wissner-Gross|Alexander Wissner-Gross]] - [[wiki/Recursive Self-Improvement|Recursive Self-Improvement]] - [[wiki/Compute Allocation|Compute Allocation]] - [[wiki/Compute Scarcity|Compute Scarcity]] ## Share on Social Media ``` Recursive self-improvement may become the highest-value use of a frontier laboratory’s own tokens. If stronger models generate more future value than outside applications, socially valuable work can lose compute to the development of the next model generation. — Adapted from Alexander Wissner-Gross, Moonshots, October 7, 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-alexander-wissner-gross-recursive-self-improvement-may-become-the-most-valuable-use-of-frontier-tokens ```