They do.

Humans can learn from new information, but also by iteratively distilling existing information or continuously optimizing performance on an existing task.

Mathematics is a pure instance of this, in the sense that all the patterns for conjectures and proven theorems are available to any entity to explore, no connection to the world needed.

But any information being analyzed for underlying patterns, or task being optimized for better performance, creates a recursive learning driver.

Finally, any time two or more humans compete at anything, they drive each other to learn and perform better. Models can do that too.

Are you arguing that all AI models are using the same network structure?

This is only true in the most narrow sense, looking at models that are strictly improvements over previous generation models. It ignores the entire field of research that works by developing new models with new structures, or combining ideas from multiple previous works.

Ok. So then I guess it isn't "just a belief that magic".

Instead, it is so true and possible that you think it is actually obvious!

I'm glad you got convinced in a singular post that recursive self improvement, in the obvious way, is so true and real that it is obviously true and not magic.

Better intelligence can be defined quite easily: something which is better at (1) modeling the world; (2) optimizing (i.e. solving problems).

But if that would be too general we can assume that general reasoning capability would be a good proxy for that. And "better at reasoning" is rather easy to define. Beyond general reasoning better AI might have access to wider range of specialized modeling tools, e.g. chemical, mechanical, biological modeling, etc.

> if it is true it'll be obvious in a way that doesn't make it sound interesting anymore.

Not sure what you mean. AI which is better at reasoning is definitely interesting, but also scary.

> they just come from training bigger models on the same data.

I don't think so. OpenAI refuses to tell us how they made GPT-4. I think a big part of it was preparing better, cleaner data sets. Google tells us that specifically improved Gemini's reasoning using specialized reasoning datasets. More specialized AI like AlphaGeometry use synthetic datasets.

> Yes, OpenAI was literally founded by a computer worshipping religious cult.

Practice is the sole criterion for testing the truth. If their beliefs led them to better practice then they are closer to truth than whatever shit you believe in. Also I see no evidence of OpenAI "worshipping" anything religion-like. Many people working there are just excited about possibilities.

> Humans don't have a "recursive self-improvement" ability.

Human recursive self-improvement is very slow because we cannot modify our brains' at will. Also spawning more humans takes time. And yet humans made huge amount of progress in the last 3000 years or so.

Imagine that instead of making a new adult human in 20 years you could make one in 1 minute with full control over neural structures, connections to external tools via neural links, precisely controlled knowledge & skills, etc.

>Yes, OpenAI was literally founded by a computer worshipping religious cult.

What cult is this?