What Happens When AI Starts Building AI? Inside Recursive Self-Improvement

GPT-5.3 Codex, a model released in February, was the first to have a significant hand in its own development “from start to finish,” Amelia Glaese, OpenAI’s vice president of research, told TIME that month. By July, the number of experiments per researcher had doubled, according to the company.

Newer entrants are chasing the same prize. Recursive Superintelligence, founded by former Google, Meta, and OpenAI researchers, also hopes to create AI systems that can rebuild themselves. The months-old startup has raised $650 million.

“The idea that the wealthiest companies in the world, employing some of the smartest people on the planet, are trying to fully automate AI R&D deserves a ‘what the f-ck’ reaction,” Toner told TIME in February.

Yet the chief scientists of Anthropic and OpenAI agree on one thing. Left unchecked, this race ends badly. “We actually believe this should be slowed down … We need some sort of international norm to be able to control this,” Pachocki said. Kaplan says that once AI can train a successor largely autonomously, “I think it would be best for the world if there was coordination to make this go slower,” he says.