Why does it matter?
Once AI designs its successors, progress stops being limited by how many human researchers a lab can hire.
Direct quote
Because AI is now writing much of the code at Anthropic, it is already substantially accelerating the rate of our progress in building the next generation of AI systems. This feedback loop is gathering steam month by month, and may be only 1–2 years away from a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next. This loop has already started, and will accelerate rapidly in the coming months and years.
Dario Amodei