Anna Goldsworthy

Dean, Elder Conservatorium of Music and School of Performing Arts, Adelaide University

About

Professor Anna Goldsworthy is a pianist, writer and academic. She is Dean of the Elder Conservatorium of Music and School of Performing Arts at the University of Adelaide, and Artistic Director-designate of the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM). An award-winning author and performer, her recent Quarterly Essay, 'The God We Made: the Threat an Promise of Artificial Intelligence' examines the impact of artificial intelligence on art, education and human creativity, bringing a distinctive interdisciplinary perspective to contemporary debates.

Speaking at Australian AI Safety Forum 2026

Recursive Self-Improvement: When AI Builds Itself

8 July 2026 · 11:30 am – 11:55 am · Refectorypanel

Anthropic recently reported that AI is already accelerating its own development: more than 80% of the code the company ships is now written by its models. Pushed far enough, that trend points to systems capable of designing and training their own successors with little human input: recursive self-improvement. Is that a distant dream, an emerging reality, or an imminent danger? This panel brings together differing views to debate how close we actually are, what would have to be true for the loop to close, and what it would mean for safety, governance, and human oversight if it did.