The Speed of AI Is No Longer Linear - And Self-Improving Models Are Why

Eighteen months ago, the best AI models could summarize text and answer questions with reasonable accuracy. Today, they write production code, conduct multi-step research across hundreds of sources, and reason through problems that would take a human analyst an entire afternoon. That progression didn't happen gradually. It happened in lurches - each one larger than the last. The reason is architectural, not just computational. We've crossed a threshold where AI models are meaningfully contributing to their own improvement, and that changes the math on how fast this field moves.