Will AI be Recursively Self Improving by mid 2026?

Question

Ben Pace and Nathan Helm-Burger recently made a bet about whether AI systems will have begun to meaningfully improve themselves by August 23rd, 2026.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/btzdPwkmmcZ2KAQwm/debate-is-it-ethical-to-work-at-ai-capabilities-companies?commentId=MSahjmFwWRyeJNuqo

Nathan: "I believe we are already in a substantial hardware and data overhang, and that within the next 24 months the threshold of capability of LLM agents will suffice to begin recursive self-improvement. This means it is likely that a leader in AI at that time will come into possession of strongly super-human AI (if they choose to engage their LLM agents in RSI)"

Ben: "I don't expect that a cutting edge model will start to train other models of a greater capability level than itself, or make direct edits to its own weights that have large effects (e.g. 20%+ improvements on a broad swath of tasks) on its performance, and the best model in the world will not be one whose training was primarily led by another model. "

This market resolves YES if Nathan wins the bet, and NO if Ben wins. The resolution date is one year later than the cutoff so that information about whether meaningful self-improvement started prior to August 2026 can be taken into account.

Manifold Markets · Answer

Unlikely — Manifold Markets prediction market estimates a 7% chance (124 traders, as of Sep 27, 2026).