It seems likely that the answer depends on how rapidly and how reliably you want your "seed" to be able to turn into an actual working superintelligence. For instance:
Something along the lines of AIXI might have a very short program indeed, but not do anything useful unless you gave it more computing power and time than the entire universe can offer. (It is AIUI an open question whether that's actually finite. Let's suppose it is.)
A lots-of-humans simulator might well produce a superintelligence but its inhabitants might instead wipe themselves out in a (simulated) nuclear war, or just turn out not to be smart enough to make a working AI, or something.
The most simple, able to self-improve "seed" for a superintelligence must be how complex?
Give your (wild) estimation or a pure guess in the terms of bits.
Do you reckon it is 1000 bits enough? At least 1000000 is required? More than 10^20 bits?
I wonder what your approximate numbers are.
Thank you!