(Sorry for belated replies, I've been completely off LW for a few months and am only now going through my inbox)

I’m not arguing yet, in case I’m missing something, but why do you think that something stupider than a German Shepherd would be better at improving itself up to GSD levels (and stop right there) than a human would be at doing the same job (i.e., improving the potential AGSD, not the human itself).

This is not what I think, or at least not what I expressed. My thoughts are similar, but elaboration later; first, this was an option in parallel with the option where a human designs a complete AGSD and then turns it on, and with the option where a bunch of humans design sub-AGSD iterations up until the point where they obtain a final AGSD.

As for elaboration, I do think it's easier to build a so-called super-idiot-savant sub-GSD-general-intelligence, post-human-self-improvement AI than building any sort of "out-of-the-box" general intelligence. I don't currently recall my reasons, since my mind is set in a different mode, but the absurd and extreme case is that of having a human child. A human child is stupider than a GSD, but learns better than adult humans. It is also much simpler to do than any sort of AI programming. ;) But I only say this last in jest, and it isn't particularly relevant to the discussion.