About whether LLMs that can write and train new LLMs are effectively self-replicating.
Has this happened?
Yes 10 (8%)Not sure 24 (19%)No 92 (73%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether LLMs that can write and train new LLMs are effectively self-replicating.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
I agree, LLMs can generate the source code for their network, can generate the training data, supervise a model being trained and explain step by step what they do. That's why I specifically said they can't make GPUs, if they could, they would be self replicators. We'd have to consider them alive.