AI improving the software that trains AI, which trains better AI, and so on. But the ratio is the most instructive number in the entire recursive self-improvement debate, and almost nobody quotes it. Recursive Self-Improvement in AI: From Bounded Self-Refinement to Autonomous Research Loops (July 2026)Unlimited Self-improvement is mainly verification limited. Their system, AIDE², had an outer AI agent rewriting the harness code of an inner AI research agent. Better chips run better EDA tools, which design better chips.