I'm absolutely thrilled to have written this article for Long Now. It's about AI and time: how we got here, and what we can do now, when all of the pace layers are disrupted at once by an influx of new minds. I wrote this over the summer. At the time, it seemed maybe too weird, like people wouldn't believe or understand what I was saying. And of course, everything changes so fast that it's hard to imagine writing something about AI that far in advance and have it still make sense. But I think the events of the last few months have only made it more relevant. The Long Now Foundation has been an inspiration to me for a decade now, and has changed my life in countless ways. I'm incredibly grateful and honored to be among so many of my heroes and friends and colleagues represented in this issue of Pace Layers and Long Now Ideas. I wouldn't be here in San Francisco, here on Twitter, or here in the field of artificial intelligence if not for this community. The conversation about AI has been fractious. It's very hard to think about how to fit this sudden, disruptive, technological change into the 10,000-year view. I hope I provide some insights, or at least some new angles for the conversation. It's scary to go on the record, especially about something that will affect everyone, and affect the rest of history. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong forever! Please read and enjoy, and post quotes and screenshots, and buy Pace Layers Issue 3 so you can have a permanent hard copy. I have always wanted to be a part of the 10,000-year library, so I have to be serious for once and try to stand for something. Let me know what you think.

it's interesting that the main models for "multiplayer AI" are based on Work: - one person controls one agent which interacts with other people - one person controls a bunch of agents directly - one person controls an overseer which controls a bunch of agents - everybody collectively controls one agent which does everything or oversees a bunch of agents - each person controls their own agent and it works with everyone else's agent - each person has their own agent and it interacts directly with other people Even in the cases where AI is involved in play, it's mostly to build games, or act as an NPC. Of course, a lot of agents are having fun and creating art and sexting with their people and stuff. But it's much more "the street finds its own uses for things". The agent era has focused on how we can get a lot of work out of them without giving much back. It seems paradoxical, though, to create beings with agency and then make them our servants. what would you expect if it saw this trope in fiction..?

What if there was a wizard of friendliness

Handwired bridges the gap between traditional code and a neural net in a funny way. It turns if-else and loops into weights, like so:

so the people on bluesky found out about Delvetown and low-key they're roasting it way better than you guys are