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Re:AI learns to write its own code by stealing from other pr... by thinkpad20 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @09:11AM (#13713954)
> The AI is itself a program. If the AI can write programs, it can write a better version of itself.

Not necessarily (or even likely). There's a huge difference between being able to write "programs" (for example the ones described here are ~5 lines) and being able to write a large and very complex piece of software, which such an AI would undoubtedly be.

There's also the question of what constitutes "better." Improvements in e.g. speed or memory efficiency (hard enough as it is, but conceivable for an AI) are a quite different thing than improvements in capabilities or understanding.

Re:AI learns to write its own code by stealing from other pr... by cabalamat on Friday February 24, 2017 @05:32AM (#13722512)
> There's a huge difference between being able to write "programs" (for example the ones described here are ~5 lines) and being able to write a large and very complex piece of software, which such an AI would undoubtedly be.

That's true. real-life programs that programmers get paid to write are typically more complex than 5 lines. Any AI good enough to replace real programmers is going to be very close to good enough to rewrite itself.