Is Recursive Self-Improvement Real?

New Colab episode between https://www.youtube.com/@UC1U09Fb_5oEBo0mutiNYh5w and https://www.youtube.com/@UCfJRkBBiPtKZyZn_3PxWaiQ !In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter and Nathan meet again with Carl Brown (Internet of Bugs) to discuss Reflections on Trusting Trust, Coding Machines, and all things AI!Join the Book Overflow Discord (Carl is on here as well!) https://discord.gg/ZwS2fqW7ZZ Check out Carl's new substack here: https://internetofbugs.substack.com/ where Carl is going to be doing some low-jargon writing on the intersection between tech (including AI) and Society.Carl's Site with Links to what he's working on:https://internetofbugs.com/Ted Chiang articles: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ted-chiang.htmlhttps://kottke.org/21/04/ted-chiang-fears-of-technology-are-fears-of-capitalismhttps://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-webBrian Merchant's "Blood in the Machine" SubStackhttps://www.bloodinthemachine.com/Cory Doctorow's stuff we mentioned:https://pluralistic.net/tag/enshittification/https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-conhttps://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittificationIlya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research on the Dwarkesh Patel Podcasthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR20FWCCjAsArticle about adapting to AI in the classroomhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/magazine/ai-higher-education-students-teachers.html---00:00 Intro02:37 Welcome to Carl Brown05:42 Trusting Trust and Coding Machines12:57 AI Skepticism and the Limits of Scaling28:04 Vibe Coding and Code Quality43:02 AI Safety and the Doomer Narrative1:01:54 Every Decade They Say Programming Is Dead1:06:19 Disruption Culture and the AI Bubble1:23:57 Agentic Security and Trust1:32:42 Final Thoughts---Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5kj6DLCEWR5nHShlSYJI5LApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/book-overflow/id1745257325X: https://x.com/bookoverflowpodCarter on X: https://x.com/cartermorganNathan's rojoroboto newsletter: https://rojoroboto.com/newsletterNathan's substack Functionally Imperative: https://functionallyimperative.com----------------Book Overflow is a podcast for software engineers, by software engineers dedicated to improving our craft by reading the best technical books in the world. Join Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups as they read and discuss a new technical book each week!The full book schedule and links to every major podcast player can be found at https://www.bookoverflow.io