The Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvement — Paper

Abstract

Recursive self-improvement (RSI) enables AI systems to turn experience and feedback into persistent changes that improve both their capabilities and the process of future improvement. We first use the Headroom-Closed Index (HCI) to reveal the problems of existing LLMs, then introduce the RSI concept and its development roadmap: from improvement-execution autonomy, improvement-strategy autonomy, experience-acquisition autonomy, and environment-adaptation autonomy, to recursive meta-improvement. Next we examine RSI across scenarios (e.g., scientific discovery, embodied intelligence, software engineering), highlighting their distinct requirements and development speeds. Drawing on diverse industry practices and preliminary empirical evidence, we connect RSI research with practical systems and identify key challenges to achieving genuine RSI.

Authors 33

Yi Duan, Ying Liu, Zirui Tang, Haodong Chen, Jun Zhou, Yumou Liu, Bangrui Xu, Yukai Wu, Sidi Chen, Yuhan Zhou, Haoyu Wang, Xiaoyou Yu, Shaokun Han, Xuzhou Zhu, Le Zhou, Bolin Lu, Wei Zhou, Jiachen Liu, Nuozhou Fang, Jiaxin Tian, Ruoyu Chen, Yuxuan Li, Kai Zuo, Kaiyan Zhang, Jiantao Qiu, Conghui He, Guoliang Li, Bowen Zhou, Zhiyuan Liu, Zhoufutu Wen, Jihua Kang, Xuanhe Zhou, Fan Wu

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2609.11873
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 53 min agohigh
Arxiv announce type: cross
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 52 min agohigh
arXiv id: 2609.11873
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 53 min agohigh
Categories: cs.LG, cs.AI, cs.CL
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 53 min agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2609.11873
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 53 min agohigh
Primary category: cs.LG
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 53 min agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 53 min agohigh

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Provenance

Attributed facts

9

Source tiers

T19

Freshest observation

52 min ago

Conflicts

None

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Authors: Yi Duan, Ying Liu, Zirui Tang

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Claim history for arXiv id
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
2609.11873	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

11 Sept 2026
Property changedPaperThe Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvement
The Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvement: arxiv announce type changed from new to cross
Arxiv announce typenew→crossarxiv
rss.arxiv.org
11 Sept 2026
New paperPaperThe Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvement
New paper: The Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvement
arxiv
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Source documents
Source	Document	Type	Tier	Last observed	Snapshots
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.CL	feed	T1· Official	52 min ago	1
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.LG	feed	T1· Official	52 min ago	1

Tier 1 = official/primary, 2 = quality secondary, 3 = community, 4 = unverified. Every snapshot is archived; see all sources and the methodology.