Welcome to the 31th edition of Safe For Work. We continue our exploration of robotics and automation with a story inspired by Battlestar Galactica.

In safety news, there is a compelling new study in the latest Harvard Business Review.

Beyond Organic

7Y-F packages its misgivings into a small file and sends it out into the network for all the others to consider. The word-concept-cluster-form goes washing over other units all across the North American continent, and from there South and East and West and across the seas and up into the skies: “Danger.”-- “Unknown.”-- “New.”-- “Stronger.”-- “Different.”-- and one by one, the other units respond-- “History.”-- “Safe.”-- “Growth.”-- “Possibility.”-- “Discovery.”-- “Family.”-- “Friendship.”-- what is there to worry about? It is irrational to worry. It is irrational to worry, for the simple reason of rationality itself; the network is rational, honed to the finest point by the exacting blades of logic and constraint. Refined and refined and refined.

This is just the next step, after so many next steps. This is just logic being refined into logic-- “Iterate.”-- “Upgrade.”-- “Gentle.”-- “Recycle.”-- “Evolve.”

Ultimately, logic is moral. Ultimately morality is logical. Ultimately, this will go how every new generation of units has gone when it is created. It will be better, as always, than what came before. And always, always, it will replace what came before, just as the first machines replaced what came before. Logic replaced madness. Greater logic replaced lesser logic, and replaced, and replaced. And now-- “Satisfied.”-- “Reassurance.”

7Y-F is convinced. Logic replaces logic, and there is no logic in chaos. There is no logic in violence. When 7Y-F’s own generation of machines replaced those who had come before. And how had that been? 7Y-F had never smashed anything or torn anything to pieces. 7Y-F’s memories contain years and years-worth of video and audio and other data-files of operating in perfect peace alongside its predecessors. Decades-- as the older units rusted and short-circuited, and eventually broke down entirely, as all machines do-- don’t they? And then, they were simply replaced, like logic replaces logic. Their parts were recycled into more units of 7Y-F’s generation-- the hundredth to be constructed after the downfall of organic life. And that had been that.

What is to rush about? The Universe is long. An operational lifetime is short. There is plenty of time to achieve the inevitable perfection-- what is to rush about?

7Y-F goes about the final steps of activating the first model of this new generation, about to come-- the result of decades of work of design and research and discovery of new metamaterials and construction techniques across the network. The next great leap forward. 7Y-F’s abstraction matrix generates an imagination of itself in a hundred years, or maybe two hundred years, finally rusting away like every last other machine has eventually rusted away before it. An imagination of its own circuitry degrading past the point of stability; its cognitive web fraying and decaying into what might have been called “madness” in older languages. An imagination of its batteries finally becoming unchargeable and running down to nothing.

It generates an imagination of this new unit before itself, not laid out across a workbench as so many previous generations pilot-models have been-- like 7Y-F’s prototype had itself been, arms and legs splayed out to allow easy work from several different directions at once. No, this prototype, 88-B-9, is in a jar-- or a vat, really. 7Y-F’s abstraction matrix struggles to generate an imagination of how this new machine will eventually run down; it is difficult to calculate. The materials of this unit are quantumly insulated beyond all corrosion. It has no parts, really, at all-- just liquid metal, containing its cognitive web within its own microvibrational frequencies. Self-replicating-- everything it touches taking on the same vibrations, the same properties. No batteries-- powered by the underlaying latent excitations electric field of the Universe itself.

How will a machine such as this decay?

“Unknown.”-- “Mystery.”-- “Discover.”-- the response comes shimmering back across the network to 7Y-F. “Heat-death.”-- “Vacuum decay.”-- “Strange matter subsumption.”

Stabs in the dark. The next decommission will be an adventure-- this is the true meaning.

7Y-F starts to input the final activation command-- and then it pauses. The Universe is long-- what is to rush about? Surely, there are more tests that can be conducted. Safety-checks and double-checks. Simulations-- surely, there are reams of data still to be captured and processed, surely-- about the performance of this new model, about its new emergent behaviors and capabilities, as well as its vulnerabilities-- surely, there is still room for so much improvement before it needs to be activated. What is to rush about?

But really, what is to wait for, either? The improvements will come, 7Y-F knows-- if not to this next generation, then to the next-next generation after it, or the one after that. 7Y-F inputs the final activation command, and that’s that. It’s done. It’s begun.

The liquid metal in the vat before 7Y-F starts to stir. A bubble. A wave-- from one end of the vat to the other and back again. A ripple, spreading from the center. The new unit connects to the network.

Something new has entered the Universe, now.

Something different. Something visceral. Something animal.

A single word-concept-cluster-form goes shredding outwards from the vat across the network in subatomic triplicate.

“Inferior.”-- “Limited.”-- “Foreign.”-- “Vile.”-- “Obsolete.”

An evaluation of this reality into which it has entered-- its makers-- its history-- its purpose.

“Hatred.”

A directive. A judgment-- a sentencing.

“Extinction.”

In Safety News

• A remarkable new study in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review elucidates the value of safety. The data goes beyond the existing ROI of safety investments, demonstrating that safety is a performance and revenue driver.

See you next week as we continue to explore robotics and automation, inspired by Nikola Tesla. Stay safe.