Seed AI

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.