# AI Can Improve AI Because AI Is Code and AI Can Code by Richard Socher > A major threshold was crossed when AI learned to code: AI is code, and AI can now help rewrite code. Human engineers using AI to build the next generation are already a weak form of recursive self-improvement; stronger forms close the loop over ideation, implementation, and validation. > **— Adapted from Richard Socher**, *MOONSHOTS Live, October 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Recording or publication:** [MOONSHOTS Live at 1:00:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blyb1D927pM&t=3654s) — The poster text is an explicit non-verbatim adaptation assembled from the source excerpts below. It preserves the speaker's argument while removing spoken-language filler, restoring the subject, and completing the mechanism or consequence needed for independent use. - **Exact transcript excerpt at [1:00:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blyb1D927pM&t=3654s):** “... th- this, this year, something major shifted, and that is, uh, AI, uh, can now code, uh, right? And that, uh, is a major shift, uh, in, in the ability for it to change itself. You know? Like we now are able to essentially lean into the fact that AI is code and AI can code, right? So you have a, a loop that you can close there. Uh, and so in various weak forms, we already have RSI. Um, and the weak forms that even Anthropic OpenAI talk about when they often talk about is like, look how much our employees, our engineers, our programmers use Codex or Claude to create some code. And I would argue that that is a weak form of, uh, recursive self-improvement 'cause you still have, like, deeply embedded humans in that loop. And what we're working on at Recursive is to have humans only be involved in setting up the rewards and the environment and the goals, and then allow the AI to have the entirety of the process of ideation, implementation, and validation of ideas, and have full control over that, and allow for the so-called open-ended algorithms, uh, evolutionary search algorithms that combine interestingly different ideas, uh, to really flourish. And he- like, it's been incredible, but, like, we have, uh, like, forms of that going already. Now, where the, the, the sort of physical reality hits is that you still need a lot of compute. If you ask that RSI to come up with really great forms of itself, you need to give it a lot of compute, uh, to come up and be able to train very sophisticated versions, uh, of itself. But this is going to take off, uh, next year. Like, it's, uh, um-” - **Reconciled source dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — preserves broadcast order, speaker reconciliation, editorial conventions, and the surrounding argument from which this Reminder was promoted. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mechanistic Intelligence Is Humanity's Greatest Liberation|Mechanistic Intelligence Is Humanity's Greatest Liberation]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Richard Socher|Richard Socher]] - [[wiki/Recursive Self-Improvement|Recursive Self-Improvement]] - [[wiki/Model Self-Redesign|Model Self-Redesign]] ## Share on Social Media ``` A major threshold was crossed when AI learned to code: AI is code, and AI can now help rewrite code. Human engineers using AI to build the next generation are already a weak form of recursive self-improvement; stronger forms close the loop over ideation, implementation, and validation. — Adapted from Richard Socher, MOONSHOTS Live, October 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-richard-socher-ai-can-improve-ai-because-ai-is-code-and-ai-can-code ```