An AI would be able to self-improve its software (unless artificially limited, and it's not clear to me whether that would be effective), and with enough initia

An AI would be able to self-improve its software (unless artificially limited, and it's not clear to me whether that would be effective), and with enough initial robotic and sensory capabilities it would be able to self-improve its hardware, both computational aspects and robotic aspects. The only reasons it wouldn't are if it didn't put effort into it (too busy watching Lost), or if intelligence cannot really be improved. Humans might do the equivalent of rewriting software through thinking. But it's a more limited and slow process than could be accomplished with full read/write access to software running an AI that's completely malleable and rewritable in moments. There's plenty of evidence that intelligence can be improved. Working memory is important. We have very limited working memory. We are frequently distracted by emotions. If an AI can operate at roughly equivalent speeds with greater working memory, and if it's not distracted by emotions, it may miss some of the "finer" points of life, but I can't imagine it not leapfrogging ahead of meager human progress. Maybe it's not possible. Like the thing at the beginning of Fire Upon the Deep, if it is possible, we won't really know if it is until it exists. If it's got the temperment of a class 2 perversion or the Blight, we're toast. If it's a Power that finds us amusing or irrelevant, we might be okay.