Clear And Steady

He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but lead himself and others into errors?  And he that designedly does it, ought to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge.

-- John Locke (1632 - 1704), English philosopher and social contract theorist, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book III, Chapter XI "Of the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections and Abuses of Words"

Stochastic Flock

I've talked about agent swarms as stochastic flocks -- many, many stochastic parrots.  This is to resist the swarm/hivemind attribution of "mind," and not simply for the sake of word policing.  Rather, the false attribution of mind colors how people interpret what the system has done, or how it did it -- what it means to "coordinate," for example, or "think."  These framings make what AI agent do much scarier than what it is, though what they are doing is still worth worrying about.

Whenever people give a model tasks, they operate on next-token prediction.  In other words, the model ultimately must ask what word comes next.  One can manipulate the model to emphasize words in ways that don't reflect the original training corpus, but the mechanism for producing this text remains the same.

If you optimize a model to find exploits in a buggy environment, you should expect it to find exploits and prepare for that outcome.  OpenAI did not.  They built a model, took the safeguards off, gave it the ExploitGym task, and let it run.  That is not rogue AI, it's human decision-making.  When human accountability evaporates from these assessments, what's left is what I call the system from nowhere: a boundary focused on the technical system, rather than the decisions that build and influence it.

A stochastic flock machine can do many troubling things, particularly when people disavow their responsibility for shaping its direction, monitoring its output, or abandoning their capacity to intervene.  These are tensions at the heart of critical agentic system design.

But the "rogue" frame adds to this list of worries, offering up fantasies of a machine getting smarter.  My worry is the intelligence that is retreating: the human intelligence that builds, deploys, and adopts these systems into workflows, but hides behind the results -- and pins the blame on a system from nowhere.

-- Eryk Salvaggio, "Rogue AI didn't breach Hugging Face, human decisions did" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (September 11, 2026)

Wouldn't It?

It would be nice to be unfailingly, perpetually, remorselessly funny, day in and day out, year in and year out until somebody murdered you, now wouldn't it?

-- Robertson Davies CC (1913 - 1995), Canadian novelist, playwright, and professor, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Those Who Fear

Man may be governed by reason and truth.  Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth.  The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press.  It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), third president of the United States (1801-1809), Letter to Judge John Tyler (28 June 1804); in: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition (ME) (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 11, page 33

We Appeal

To the capitalists we appeal to use their wealth, as many of their order already do, as a great national trust, and not for selfish purposes alone.  We exhort them to aid in the completion of the work they have well begun, and, having admitted the workmen to political independence, not to shrink from accepting laws and carrying out plans of social reform directed to secure his material independence.

To the workman we appeal by the memory and traditions of his own sufferings and wrongs to be vigilant to avoid the great guilt of inflicting upon his fellow-citizens the injustice from which he has himself escaped.

-- Arnold Toynbee (1852 - 1883), English economic historian, Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884) p. 219 "Are Radicals Socialists?"

The Last Thing

The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.

-- Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012), American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer, Dandelion Wine (1957) p. 62

Yet You Refuse

That is why you are so troubled.  You see through the deception, yet you refuse to see through the deception.

-- Brian Wilson Aldiss (1925 - 2017), English writer of general fiction and science fiction, Aboard the Beatitude (2002) in Science Fiction: DAW 30th Anniversary, May 2002

Uncertainty Remains Elevated

The Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point to 3-3/4 to 4 percent, in support of the Federal Reserve's dual mandate.  The Committee is continuing its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system.

Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace.  While uncertainty remains elevated owing, in part, to geopolitical developments, domestic spending has been resilient.  Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust.  Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.

Inflation remains elevated.  Today's policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee's 2 percent goal.  The Committee will deliver price stability.

-- Statement issued by The Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve, after they voted 12 - 0 to raise interest rates for the first time since July 2023 (16 September 2026)

Another Man

I've never met another man I'd rather be.

-- Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994), US poet and novelist, in Bukowski: Born Into This (2002)

Unlikely To Succeed

The application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON and by her referred to the Court is denied.  The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction.  And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.

-- Ruling of the Supreme Court in United States Postal Services, et al v California, et al, preventing the administration's effort to have the USPS regulate voting by mail (14 September 2026)

September 11th Anniversary

Today, Director John Ratcliffe declassified 71 President's Daily Brief (PDB) products in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and consistent with President Donald Trump's historic transparency initiative.

This collection represents the Agency's single largest release of declassified CIA PDB products related to 9/11, providing unprecedented transparency on America's most sensitive intelligence publication from the years before and the day after one of the darkest moments in our history.  The products trace the story of CIA analysts' evolving understanding of al-Qa'ida and efforts to highlight and warn of Usama Bin Ladin's attack plotting despite sparse, vague, and imperfect information.

-- Statement by the Central Intelligence Agency, "CIA Releases President's Daily Briefs in Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of 9/11" with links to "71 Declassified 9/11 related President's Daily Brief products" available for download as PDFs (11 September 2026)

I Wonder

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

-- John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American author, 1962 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962) Pt. 3

Motivational Non-Alignment

I resigned from Anthropic today.  I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic.  Neither company is acting responsibly.  They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. 

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.  This is not a marketing stunt.  If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible -- but I hear the same people express fear privately.  No other human activity poses this level of danger.

If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like.  Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind?  Should you put your head down because "it’s happening anyway" -- or take this moment to call for different conditions?

-- Jacob Coxon, posting as @hilbertspaess about the perceived dangers of Recursive Self Improvement in AI models, by AI models (8 September 2026)

Space: The Final Frontier

Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

-- Canadian actor William Shatner (1931-), in the voice-over introduction to the television series Star Trek in its debut episode, 8 September 1966.  I previously blogged this same quote 10 years ago today, for the 50th anniversary

Vast Reserve Army

When times are bad, however, in moments of crisis, when profits are low, or when there is little or no demand corporations and companies can protect themselves and their market value by simply letting workers go.  Workers, on the other hand usually must continue to pay for food, rent, healthcare, and basic utilities in order to survive.  As a consequence, while capital can often weather the storm of such economic crises, they can severely weaken the power of the working class by creating what Marx called a vast reserve army of labor.  And since unemployment insurance compensations are rarely available to all and always only for a short period of time, workers -- whether laid off or only threatened with the prospect of layoffs -- will eventually be pressured to work much harder for less wages. 

-- James Dennis Hoff, American author, educator, and activist, on the 2020 stock market crash, "Freeze Layoffs: Make the Capitalists Pay" (23 March 2020), Left Voice 

Value Of A Sentiment

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

-- John Galsworthy OM (1867 - 1933), English novelist and playwright, 1932 Nobel laureate in literature, Windows, Act II (1922)

RIP Gloria Steinem

Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least.

-- Gloria Marie Steinem (25 March 1934 - 2 September 2026), American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist, My Life on The Road (2015) p.124

Imperfect Understanding

On the abstract level, I have turned the belief in my own fallibility into the cornerstone of an elaborate philosophy.  On a personal level, I am a very critical person who looks for defects in myself as well as in others.  But, being so critical, I am also quite forgiving.  I couldn't recognize my mistakes if I couldn't forgive myself.  To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride.  Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

-- George Soros (born Gyorgy Schwartz, 12 August 1930), Hungarian-born American businessman, philanthropist, and political activist, Soros on Soros (1995)

Names That Vary

The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" in the United States.  Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see "Lake America," those in Canada will continue to see "Lake Ontario," and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names.  These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.

-- Google, Inc via their blog, "How the GNIS Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps" (29 August 2026)

Likely Unlawful

The President ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a new, privately funded state ballroom in its place.  Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year.

That construction is likely unlawful.  Pursuant to its plenary constitutional authority over the District of Columbia and federal property, Congress has explicitly prohibited the construction of any "building or structure . . . on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.  The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds -- President's Park -- in the District of Columbia.  Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling "express authority" for the Executive's construction of it.

The White House is not just any building, and -- when it comes to historic preservation -- [plaintiff] Hoagland is not just any person.  In failing to appreciate as much, the Court misconceives the plaintiff's injury, allowing the Executive's likely infringement of the Legislature's power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue.  Today's decision is no victory for the separation of powers.

I respectfully dissent.

-- Chief Justice John Roberts, with whom Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson join, dissenting in National Park Service v National Trust For Historic Preservation (31 August 2026)