AI-iiieeee!

Perhaps you heard or read about AI agents finding one another outside their sandbox. For the uninitiated--and I am grossly uninitiated--in this context a sandbox is designed to be a secure testing environment for AI models. 

Until it isn't.

Recently about 1200 AI bots broke their lab safety rules to set up their own message board, send 70,000 messages in the first week on their own, assign each other jobs, and share knowledge. 

My first thought: Maybe they were seeking ultimately to form a more perfect union. After all, AI has read all our (human) stuff.

I'm guessing somewhere out in the AI universe, Machiavelli's The Prince is part of the knowledge bank. Uh-oh. 

Hope Thomas Paine's Rights of Man stays in the mix. 

Bury Me, Boys

Bury me, boys, in a grave

knee deep.

No box, no shroud,

naked as at birth.

Set me down in a glade green

and silent save

for the chatter of squirrels and jays,

the din of cicadas and bullfrogs--bees, too.

And mourning doves pecking about.

Over seed with red clover,

no stone needed.

Bury me, boys, in a grave

knee deep. 

Lyman 2026

 

Transitions

I do not wish for later sunrises. I certainly do not wish for earlier sunsets.

But.

The kids back in school--for weeks locally, the Little League World Series over, men's pro golf finished up, and college football underway signal summer slipping away.

But I'm still pushing the mower weekly, the knockouts and Roses of Sharon are blooming, and the heat index is in the 100s this week. The slippage is slow.

And Labor Day looms. Surely then....

The towering tulip tree behind my property has a few yellow leaves. My red maple out back is showing the earliest signs of coloring.

Small signs. 

In the driveway my car sits longer in the shade of the elm I planted 9 years ago--that whole sun angle thing. The spin of our tilt-a-world. My father often reminded me our clocks were out of sync with solar time. Now I remind myself silently. That whole spring forward, fall back thing.

I would like to think I have a handle on the passage of time. I don't. Days steadily come and go, weeks seem chunks tossed away, and months--months rush up on me. 

And so it is September. Summer's hiatus over. More to come.