Agreed. But if the goal is something like "build the largest number of paperclips", recursive self improvement is going to be a phenomenally good way to achieve

Agreed. But if the goal is something like "build the largest number of paperclips", recursive self improvement is going to be a phenomenally good way to achieve that, unless it is already intelligent enough to be able to tile the universe with paperclips. Either way we don't care if it self improved or not, that's just the seemingly most likely path, we just care if it is overwhelmingly more powerful than us. The only thing that stops me from recursively self improving is that I'm not able to. If I could it would be a fantastic way to do good things that as an altruistic human I want to do. Like averting crises (climate change, nuclear war), minimizing poverty and misery, etc...