Yeah, exactly this. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a general intelligence. The question then is; are any of the current AI models better than humans at the specific skills required to make AIs?

I don’t know the answer. I suspect not, but it feels like we’re not too far away. Current models seem to have achieved a kind of ‘creativity’ and can be linked with other systems to shore up their deficiencies (such as maths). Maybe if one of the larger models was trained specifically to work on AI design… although how would that look? Feed an LLM lots of academic papers paired with real world implementations?

I’d be interested to see what the big labs have cooking behind the scenes.

Great explanation! I never knew there were so many competing explanations for light slowing down in a medium. I’d always just thought of it as the mass of the material warping space a little, meaning that the photon is effectively travelling further. Of course I never studied physics properly.