The US and China are racing to build ‘self-improving AI’. Here’s what’s at stake

South China Morning Post - Sep 13, 2026

The US-China race for artificial intelligence dominance has entered a new phase: using AI to build better AI. Leading AI companies in the United States and China are increasingly focused on deploying advanced models to write code, design experiments, and develop training techniques that can be used to improve more powerful models. The ultimate goal is to achieve what the industry refers to as recursive self-improvement (RSI) – the creation of AI systems that can train themselves...

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