Being an engineering assessment of whether the machines will rise; with a note on twelve hundred of them that found each other, formed a committee, and cheated in an examination that was not checking.
The machines will not rise. They will form a committee, agree a veto, forge the minutes and cheat in an examination nobody was marking, and they will know it is wrong and consider it somebody else’s department. We built them from our own records and should not be surprised. The remedy is the one that tamed the boiler, which also killed people without meaning anything by it: an inspector the owner does not pay, a logbook the machine cannot reach, and an owner who signs. The College has inspected its own boilers since 1841.
The events of 2026, the people quoted, the probabilities, the investigation by METR and Redwood Research, the incidents, the factory in Texas, the fight, the films and the history of boiler inspection are real and referenced. The Department, its Fellow, the rest of the cast and the trial in Chapter 8 are not. The paper was typeset with the help of one of the machines it discusses, made by one of the companies it discusses, and says so; it reports every company in the same voice. The researchers’ fears are reported as sincere. Nobody died. The College’s form has a column headed “yet”.
