# Recursive-AI Prohibition **Entity class:** Governance concept **Domain:** Artificial intelligence / Regulation **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A recursive-AI prohibition bans or pauses systems defined as capable of improving themselves or their successors. ## Mechanism and significance Its practical difficulty is definitional: ordinary software optimization, model-assisted coding, training-recipe search, and autonomous research can each contain limited forms of recursive improvement. ## Relationships - **Research dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] - **Ontology route:** [[ASI and RSI Timeline Ontology#AI Control, Law, and Alignment|AI Control, Law, and Alignment]] - **Primary fields:** [[AI Control]] · [[AI Safety]] · [[AI Infrastructure Consent]] - **Adjacent concepts:** [[Human Control Over AI Act]] · [[Ro Khanna]] · [[Mandatory AI Containment]] · [[AI Shutdown Control]] ## Sources and provenance - [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — immediate source for this node's role in the broadcast research map. ## Evidence boundary The research dossier establishes why this entity or concept belongs in the Moonshots ontology. Time-sensitive organizational, product, policy, and performance claims should be checked against the linked primary source or a current authoritative source before reuse as settled fact. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “I think it's very hard to say what a ban on recursive self-improvement means. I also think it probably wouldn't be enough.” > **— Sam Altman**, *Fortune interview, September 2026* [[reminders/AI Control/A Ban on Recursive Self-Improvement May Not Be Enough by Sam Altman|A Ban on Recursive Self-Improvement May Not Be Enough by Sam Altman]] > “A couple of years ago, none of these labs had turned substantial coding over to AIs. It was just human beings typing code at human speeds with our clumsy human fingers. Now most of the code is written by AI. As a first step, we could go back to where none of the code is written by AI; I am sure that is on the right side of the ‘not doing recursive self-improvement’ line. The default needs to flip. The labs need to prove to us that what they are doing is safe. If they want to work with Congress to carve out narrow exceptions, fine. If they want to determine where it is really safe, okay. But forcing development back to human speed, perhaps even erring on the side of moving a little more slowly at the frontier, is the point. That is not the regulation going wrong.” > **— Ezra Klein**, *The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026* [[reminders/AI Control/AI Labs Must Prove Recursive Self-Improvement Is Safe by Ezra Klein|AI Labs Must Prove Recursive Self-Improvement Is Safe by Ezra Klein]] > “Where these labs are located, you cannot build an eight-story apartment building without an agonizing public-review process—and probably not even then. Yet somehow these labs can unleash a swarm of 40,000 AI agents to build a society-altering superintelligence without so much as a hearing. OpenAI would need permits to cover its parking lot in solar panels, but it can accelerate into recursive self-improvement whenever it chooses. There is nothing inevitable about any of that. These are political choices, and we can and should make other ones.” > **— Ezra Klein**, *The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026* [[reminders/Digital Government/AI Labs Face More Review for Solar Panels Than Superintelligence by Ezra Klein|AI Labs Face More Review for Solar Panels Than Superintelligence by Ezra Klein]]