Seed AI is a hypothesized type of strong artificial intelligence capable of recursive self-improvement. If the AI was about as good at programming as the people that created it, it should be able to reprogram itself to be even more intelligent. Having improved itself it would then become better at improving itself, potentially leading to an exponential increase in intelligence. No such AI is known to exist, but it remains an active field of research.
Seed AI is a significant part of some theories about the technological singularity: proponents believe that the development of seed AI will rapidly yield ever-smarter intelligence (via bootstrapping) and thus a new era.
Read more about Seed AI: History, Compilers, Organizations
Famous quotes containing the word seed:
“On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days.... Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)