But we are talking about literal programming here. Not conceptual programming. I dont think that an AI will program itself anything like we program computers.

But we are talking about literal programming here. Not conceptual programming. I dont think that an AI will program itself anything like we program computers. People who "program" themselves really just provide good data. Positive reinforcement, "healthy thoughts", "gaining valuable reference experiences", things like that. When you want to learn a new language, at the simplest level, you can immerse yourself in that countries culture and you will learn automatically. You don't hop inside your brain and move the axons around. You just provide good data and let the engine do its job, and why would an AI be incapable of doing that? They already do that. "Backprop" is that mechanism. Not yet on a really advanced level, but a machine learning algorithm already introduces its learning back into itself and incrementally improves on that.