Alibaba says Qwen3.8-Max self-improved through 33 autonomous cycles and raised its own Artificial Analysis score from 40 to 45

Alibaba Apsara press release (via Pan African Visions newswire)·high signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

In the same Apsara announcement Alibaba claimed a month of fully automated runs, covering pipeline design, data validation, iterative experimentation and error diagnosis, let Qwen3.8-Max complete 33 iterative cycles and lift its Artificial Analysis score from 40 to 45 with no human in the loop. A separate chip-design experiment ran 60 hours of self-improvement to produce production-grade chip bus modules with a 42% reduction in chip area. This is a vendor self-report with no third-party replication, so treat the numbers as a claim, but it is the most concrete recursive-self-improvement figure any major lab has put a number on.