First Steps Toward Automated AI Research — Richard Socher, CEO Recursive AI
Jul 30, 2026 · 20:24
Richard Socher, CEO of Recursive AI, presents his vision of a "Eureka machine" that automates scientific discovery through recursive self-improvement, arguing that automating research can compress centuries of progress into decades. He frames science as an evolutionary process driven by Popperian falsification, and proposes a four-pillar system covering existing knowledge, measurement, simulation, and physical experimentation. Socher shows early proof points from his lab: a NanoChat model improved from 0.93 to 0.91 bits per byte, a NanoGPT speedrun cut by over two seconds to 70 seconds, and CUDA kernels that beat NVIDIA's benchmark leaderboard across all categories. He emphasizes that while these are early wins, the direction points toward fully autonomous AI research that could ultimately tackle problems in medicine, economics, and astrophysics.
