I have to disagree with the author that optimizing compilers are "a useful precedent for thinking about the idea of an intelligence explosion". Such compilers a

I have to disagree with the author that optimizing compilers are "a useful precedent for thinking about the idea of an intelligence explosion". Such compilers are designed to do one thing, and they are designed to do it some fixed amount better than their predecessors. An AI that can improve itself will instead probably have to be at the level of a human thinker, who can be "creative" and adapt/produce results in a wide variety of situations -- the fact that our brains exist show that such a machine is possible. Those who anticipate an intelligence explosion are picturing these general "thinking machines", not advanced optimizing compilers. Also, > I.Q. represents the idea that intelligence can be usefully captured by a single number, this idea being one of the assumptions made by proponents of an intelligence explosion I have never heard this assumption in a technical discussion in the modern age, and the author provides no source here. I'm overall unconvinced by this article.