Good point.

The development of some kind of strong AI is often proposed as a catalyst for a technological singularity, and I was kind of following that lead. While I agree that self-awareness may not be needed, it is the only thing I can think of that would motivate an AI to enhance itself up the exponential curve. Relying oh humans to do this probably wouldn't work (past some initial pump-priming) as they tend to get distracted by other human-scale things.

On the other hand, speculating about motivation in relation to an AI may be misleading anyway...