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:
“Let us not succumb to nature. We will marshall the clouds and restrain tempests; we will bottle up pestilent exhalations; we will probe for earthquakes, grub them up, and give vent to the dangerous gas; we will disembowel the volcano, and extract its poison, take its seed out. We will wash water, and warm fire, and cool ice, and underprop the earth. We will teach birds to fly, and fishes to swim, and ruminants to chew the cud. It is time we looked into these things.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)