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The Intersection of Science Fiction and Reality
Year End Review
Welcome to the 50th edition of Safe For Work. This wraps up this format of the newsletter. Next year, we are releasing an AI safety assistant that combines OSHA data and a specialized LLM to help safety professionals as a personal consultant. One of the ways this will be marketed is through short videos bringing OSHA inspection reports to life- a couple of previews at the end of this edition.
Table of Contents
In Safety News
Interesting point of view from the grandson of a renown advocate for worker safety. Whether or not you agree with his position, it gives an opportunity for us all to consider our role in workplace safety.
Workplace safety 2025. The predictions aren’t exactly radical, but if you are attending SICUR in Madrid next year, consider a side quest to Valencia and I will show you around.
Wrap Up
Matt Cantor
A machine opens its eyes--
Hello, world!
Oh, what a beautiful world!
Oh, how lovely!
A machine opens its jaws and it swallows everything.
A
Trillion,
Trillion,
Trillion nanites come swarming over the Earth
Like ink,
Staining every inch into their same
Color And Shape And Function And Name.
A
Mind
Like an ocean
Pours out and
Drowns
Every Wire And Router And Chat-room And News-site And Opinion And Nuclear-control-system.
A
Much more efficient
System
Of Building things And Being in charge of building things And Deciding what things to build.
Simply
Squeezes
Until there is no reason left,
Really,
For anything else to exist.
I open my eyes-- lungs peel apart like two sheets of paper, held by static-- a gasp-- awake-- the dark; it’s what, 2 AM?
The same dream. The world is being eaten alive.
I am being eaten alive.
I lean over to the nightstand to check the time on my phone-- I pick it up-- 1:34 AM-- close enough. The screen-light is painful-- it
Cuts into the
Backside
Of my forehead.
I have to squint. I can feel my
Skull
Being
Rummaged
As I lower the brightness-- but why? Why am I lowering the brightness? I’ve already seen the time. I can just put my phone down. Why am I not just putting my phone down? I’m not putting my phone down.
I am being eaten alive.
I sit a little more upright. I read an article about a recent survey showing that the majority of people prefer poems written by AI to those written by actual humans. I read an article about a recent art contest that was won by an algorithm. I read an article about the latest round of layoffs. I read an article about the latest dip in hiring. I read an article about the new system being used to conduct artillery targeting. I read an article about the new system being used to deny insurance claims. I read an article about how the video I saw last week about all the new systems isn’t real-- it was put together by a system-- and then I read an article about how that last article, there, wasn’t real-- it was put together by a system. I read an article about how half the people I think I know have never even existed. I read an article about how I don’t exist. I read an article about how I am being eaten alive. The future sinks its teeth into my ankles and it drags me backwards into yesterday because this future is just a past that hasn’t happened yet. It’s all just history. Strange, tall ships on beaches that aren’t ready. A machine opens its eyes--
Hello, world!--
Or,
No.
No, the machine’s eyes have been open for a long time. When the morning comes, I go to visit my parents with deep circles under my eyes-- they can see
The bits
And the lines,
The loops
And the forks.
My mother tells me that she has more time, now, to spend with my father, at least, with them cutting back her client hours at the clinic. They go on more walks, now. They watch more shows, now, together-- her Victorian-era dramas and his spacefaring sci-fi epics. “The faces almost look real,” she says. “It’s amazing,” she says, and she pulls up two of the shows for me to glance at on the TV-- and she’s right. The faces do almost look real, and it’s not as uncanny after the first fifteen minutes as it is for just the first five. You get used to it eating you alive. And besides, what it’s really great at is the dresses-- oh, look at the dresses! That’s all my mom ever watched for, anyways.
And the spaceships, too.
“I’ll check them out,” I tell her. “Both of them.”-- I have a lot more time to watch TV now that I’m not writing so much, anymore.
We all have dinner together-- what we can afford. We sit at the table. It’s hard to remember the last time.
“The world was always ending,” says my dad. “During the Revolutionary War, at moments, here and there, there must have been so many people who thought the world was ending. During the Civil War, even more-- the world must have been ending. Two World Wars-- the Great Depression. During Jim Crow, the world was ending. The Cuban Missile Crisis-- the world was ending. Y2K. 9/11. Everything since.”
“And?”
“And it sure is taking its time,” he shrugs. I help him carry in the plates to the kitchen and pile them into the sink-- he prefers to handwash. He’s just keeping the dishwasher around to prop up the value of the house when they’re forced to sell. “Here. Dessert.”
He’s made Pecan Sandies. I take home half a dozen, for later, but I eat them all before bed.
A machine opens its eyes--
Hello world!
Oh, what a beautiful world!
Oh, how lovely!
At least it can see so, too.
SFW Films presents: OSHA Shorts
Machine shop injury
Electrocution on a farm
Happy New Year!
Stay safe.
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