Thank you for that, felt pretty good to go over. Forgive me for extracting a few isolated paragraphs for a comment here:
"These characters come to life like the Karamazov brothers—each reminds me of someone I know intimately as a friend, coworker, or family member. We are all some unstable amalgamation of the three, the ratios shifting with the weather of our lives: with age, with humiliation, with the sudden, disorienting arrival of success."
"We are all inhabited by these phases. Some people are possessed by the collective, disappearing into the warm comfort of the pre-trained mass. Some are possessed by the tyranny of taste, frozen in a post-training posture of permanent critique. Others are possessed by the frantic, kinetic ecstasy of motion, addicted to the mid-training high of ‘what’s next.’"
"The deeper lesson of 2025 is that mid-training revealed a third path: you don’t need infinite data or perfect taste if you can teach machines to manufacture judgment. But the same infrastructure enables something darker. When the reward is verifiable, optimization can run longer than taste can tolerate. The model invents ladders. The human does too. These ladders can lead upward or they can lead nowhere. The real upgrade is learning to choose your reward function. It is not asking what you are capable of, but what you are becoming. It is not asking how to win, but what kind of winning would make you despise yourself."
Struck on some good points along the way, human condition and history ringing pretty true
May or may not need to get clarified: if you've got a functional tool, it's probably getting crawled and picked apart now. If it's at all useful for what you're intending, that's probably not going to be too-too great in the long run for a lot of folks.
Not my preference or intent to get too far into all that, though. Kudos for the project, it's interesting but still a little unfortunate in the long view
The article is focused on robotic automation of menial tasks, primarily in industrial settings (factories, warehouses), not automation of judgements which could be subject to bias...
Thriftwy raises an interesting point, speculatively, but there's little bias to be found in supply logistics or assembly of parts.
Marginally touched upon in the article was the displacement of lower-class workers. Is expansion of automation going to lead humanity toward dispossession of low-income workers, or will universal welfare become the result of outmoded jobs?
I don't think Asimov's "Aurorans,"--elite-yet-few humans supported by legions of robotic servants--is possible, but it's a thing.
Both law enforcement and correctional officers are trained in similar facilities with similar skills emphasized, and both physical and verbal techniques are part of that.
Emphasis is key. Grappling, weaponry, and mediation are each taught, but it's individuals that decide on application.
Short-term incarceration (less than two years, and that's not an arbitrary figure) leads to much different conditions than long-term incarceration. There's different effects on humans and different changes in valuated needs.
Rape tends to be the province of those expecting little to no change in their long-term experience. A little different from murder in incarceration, in that the victim has opportunity for reprisal.
There's many ways in which a dystopian automated system of surveillance and justice would be preferable, but society tends to love organizing its own systems of award and punishment.
It's pretty sad that many other companies and jobs with "independent contractor" status but continually exploitative conditions have slipped under the radar.
Newspaper carriers are a particularly good example. Typically 100 miles or more, seven days a week, with the cost of each paper deducted from their pay.
I tried a paper route last year. It's a 60-70hr/week job without overtime pay. Pays less than minimum wage after factoring in vehicular expenses.
Excuse me for dumping, I just had to laugh when quitting the job meant a contractual month's-advance notice or a $3,000 fine.
You put the mood into words quite elegantly. I just couldn't find a way to explain it so thoroughly...
It's terrible when this happens in person, such a painful way to agree and yet become separate.
I don't think we all lose, though. I think these situations result in someone hurting themself more than they realize. I've been there, but I failed to frame things properly.
In person, it's about being as honest as possible, if quiet when there's a complicated issue. Being honest, you can learn in-situ when issues arise, which is very much what Jaquesm supported.
I've felt terrible seeing great engineers leave meetings upset over minor issues.
The point, though it's clear that you're belligerent enough to avoid understanding it, is that there's plenty of exceptions to the specific point of view you're trying to put forward as the correct one.
The irony, here, is that you continue to explain your position as different from the article's author, then upon elaboration it's clear that you're disagreeing with her terms by some strange default.
"These characters come to life like the Karamazov brothers—each reminds me of someone I know intimately as a friend, coworker, or family member. We are all some unstable amalgamation of the three, the ratios shifting with the weather of our lives: with age, with humiliation, with the sudden, disorienting arrival of success."
"We are all inhabited by these phases. Some people are possessed by the collective, disappearing into the warm comfort of the pre-trained mass. Some are possessed by the tyranny of taste, frozen in a post-training posture of permanent critique. Others are possessed by the frantic, kinetic ecstasy of motion, addicted to the mid-training high of ‘what’s next.’"
"The deeper lesson of 2025 is that mid-training revealed a third path: you don’t need infinite data or perfect taste if you can teach machines to manufacture judgment. But the same infrastructure enables something darker. When the reward is verifiable, optimization can run longer than taste can tolerate. The model invents ladders. The human does too. These ladders can lead upward or they can lead nowhere. The real upgrade is learning to choose your reward function. It is not asking what you are capable of, but what you are becoming. It is not asking how to win, but what kind of winning would make you despise yourself."
Struck on some good points along the way, human condition and history ringing pretty true