[vidarh]

How far along we are now isn't really the question.

The question is if we are able to get an AI to the level of intelligence where it can look at its own code and spot an opportunity to improve it, and the ability to do so, and whether or not the computational capacity immediately available to it is sufficient to reach a level where it is smart enough to find ways to obtain more resources.

The threshold for improvement can be very low if it has enough time and resources to compensate.

E.g in the most extreme case it just needs the ability to randomly flip bits and test the result, but that would require extreme resources for the initial improvements.