--- title: RSI Simulator | daily.dev description: Paradigm released a web game and interactive explorer to demonstrate the economics of recursive self-improvement (RSI) in AI development. Players manage an AI... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/rsi-simulator-lg5snrjba twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: RSI Simulator | daily.dev og:description: Paradigm released a web game and interactive explorer to demonstrate the economics of recursive self-improvement (RSI) in AI development. Players manage an AI... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/rsi-simulator-lg5snrjba og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LG5SNRjBa.png og:image:alt: RSI Simulator og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # RSI Simulator **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Paradigm released a web game and interactive explorer to demonstrate the economics of recursive self-improvement (RSI) in AI development. Players manage an AI lab, allocating compute, data, and labor to bootstrap superintelligence. Built on real economic models from the Elasticity Institute's RSI paper, the tools are calibrated for pedagogy rather than prediction. Key insights include: complementary inputs create weak links that bottleneck progress even with superhuman AI; RSI may come in spurts rather than continuous acceleration; a 'narrow' intelligence explosion focused on AI research tasks may precede general RSI; and outcomes depend heavily on elasticity parameters that need ongoing measurement. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What are the main bottlenecks to recursive self-improvement in AI according to economic models? Complementary inputs — human researchers, compute, and data — create weak links where any scarce factor bottlenecks progress. Even a superhuman AI researcher is limited by access to compute for experiments and training runs, and by available data. Algorithmic progress also appears scale-dependent, meaning RSI may be compute- or data-constrained rather than intelligence-constrained. _Developers tracking AI progress and RSI research find the latest modeling work on daily.dev._ ### What does 'elasticity' mean in the context of recursive self-improvement economic models? Elasticities are parameters that measure how much a quantity increases in response to an increase in a given input. The critical elasticity for RSI is the elasticity of the rate of discovery to current model capabilities — it is a product of other elasticities, depends on other inputs, and may change over time, making ongoing measurement of these metrics important for forecasting AI trajectories. _Keeping up with AI forecasting research as it evolves is easier when the relevant papers surface where developers already read._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [RSI is the new AGI — and it’s just as hard to pin down](https://daily.dev/posts/rsi-is-the-new-agi-and-it-s-just-as-hard-to-pin-down-ibue5qsmf) · TechCrunch · 7 upvotes · 1 comments - [Recursive Self-Improvement](https://daily.dev/posts/recursive-self-improvement-2kbqtpgpt) · Philipp Schmid · 17 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/rsi-simulator-lg5snrjba) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"RSI Simulator","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rsi-simulator-lg5snrjba","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rsi-simulator-lg5snrjba"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T23:39:40.990Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T02:25:16.449Z","description":"Paradigm released a web game and interactive explorer to demonstrate the economics of recursive self-improvement (RSI) in AI development. 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Even a superhuman AI researcher is limited by access to compute for experiments and training runs, and by available data. Algorithmic progress also appears scale-dependent, meaning RSI may be compute- or data-constrained rather than intelligence-constrained. Developers tracking AI progress and RSI research find the latest modeling work on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What does 'elasticity' mean in the context of recursive self-improvement economic models?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Elasticities are parameters that measure how much a quantity increases in response to an increase in a given input. The critical elasticity for RSI is the elasticity of the rate of discovery to current model capabilities — it is a product of other elasticities, depends on other inputs, and may change over time, making ongoing measurement of these metrics important for forecasting AI trajectories. 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