The way I see it, the difference between an online algorithm and a self-training AI is that the latter would not only need such a heuristic—let’s call it “knowledge base evaluation”—it would also need to be able to evaluate the fitness of novel knowledge base evaluation heuristics.
On reflection, I’m now contradicting my original statement; the above is a stab toward an algorithmic notion of “self-training” that is orthogonal to how restricted an algorithm’s training input set is, or who is restricting it, or how. Using this half-formed notion, I observe that Google’s ranking algorithm is AFAIK not self-training, and is also subject to a severely restricted input set. I apologize for any confusion.
On reflection, I’m now contradicting my original statement; the above is a stab toward an algorithmic notion of “self-training” that is orthogonal to how restricted an algorithm’s training input set is, or who is restricting it, or how. Using this half-formed notion, I observe that Google’s ranking algorithm is AFAIK not self-training, and is also subject to a severely restricted input set. I apologize for any confusion.