Human beings are more productive in groups than individually, possibly due to the fact that there is a limit to how much one human brain can improve itself in terms of speed of computation and areas of expertise.

By contrast, if a machine with general-purpose artificial intelligence is created and then assigned a task, would it be possible that the machine will be able to better accomplish its task by continuously improving its own computational power and mastery of various skills, as opposed to collaborating with other agents (whether copies of itself, other AI's, or even humans)?

In other words, would an AGI ever need to collaborate, or would it always be able to achieve its goals alone?