> “Recursively self-improving systems, because of contingent bottlenecks, diminishing returns, and counter-reactions […], cannot achieve exponential progress in practice. Empirically, they tend to display linear or sigmoidal improvement.”

Moore's Law. Use computers to make better computers. Exponential growth over more than 7 orders of magnitude and, although the growth rate is slowing, it hasn't run out of steam yet.

If AI eventually exhibits anywhere near that level of recursive self-improvement, godlike superintelligences lie in our future.