[cmsj]

I don't think it's right to suggest that an absolute level of generality would be necessary for that kind of self-improvement.

If we assume a future where humans are able to create a human-level AI, then it would have at least two substantial advantages over us:

* It would probably have substantially more insight into how its "brain" works than we have of ours, because it would know how we created it. This suggests it could at least make small improvements.

* Unlike our relatively fixed brains, it would be able to remake itself over and over, either very quickly, or at least over comparatively vast timescales.

The obvious conclusion from those two factors is that it would likely be able to start at human-level, but rapidly accelerate up a curve and go far beyond our intellect in probably a lot less time than it took for evolution to come up with us.

[psyc]

I would add that it wouldn’t tire or bore, wouldn’t make trivial errors, and wouldn’t suffer from poor recall.