Miles Brundage says recursive self-improvement needs compute scaling

Miles Brundage, Executive Director of AVERI, stated that automated AI research and recursive self-improvement would stall without compute already above critical thresholds and continuing to rise. Discussions on X examined whether compute forms the primary constraint on such progress. An article posted by Adit Jain and reposted by Nazneen Rajani referenced the Bitter Lesson and scaling laws to distinguish local hardware limits from engineering factors.

Original post

MI

Miles Brundage#20@MILES_BRUNDAGE

Automated AI R+D, recursive self-improvement, etc. all feel like compute in a trench coat to me In the sense that they would not be going anywhere (or would fizzle out at a much lower level) if compute weren't both 1. already above a critical level, 2. always increasing

5:31 PM · May 16, 2026 View on X