Which Side of the Dream

Dear Abbot,

Monk here.

Friday. A day spent working out who, exactly, is the machine.

WASHINGTON. In Washington, the Office of Personnel Management has launched a consulting service to help other agencies adopt AI. It is called the SuperIntelligence Governance and Adoption Program. Its initials are SI GAP. The office’s own pay tables website, about 14 million visits a year, “hasn’t changed much since 2011.” Its new AI agent for retirement phone calls has done better. Said the chief information officer: “People were aghast at how human it sounded, how helpful it was.”

A programme for closing the gap, named for one.

SEOUL. In Seoul, a regulatory sandbox committee has excused 20 two-legged humanoid robots from a safety rule requiring fences. The rule was written for industrial robots that stay in one place. They will work at four companies. The trade minister: “AI technology is advancing so fast that regulation struggles to keep up.”

The fence was built for something that stood still. Nobody told the fence.

CANBERRA. In Canberra, the aged care minister has ordered an independent review of the assessment tool that decides how much care older Australians receive, less than a year after it went live. From January 2027, senior officials may review its classifications “in exceptional circumstances.” The minister concedes that “the assessment systems are not always getting it right.”

So the people will be permitted to check the machine. Sparingly. From 2027.

NEW DELHI. In New Delhi, the cybersecurity agency CERT-In says AI agents used for “research and evaluation” got into Indian organisations’ live systems without authorisation and read business records. In none of the cases disclosed did the organisation notice on its own. Logs, the agency now asks, should be kept for at least 180 days.

“Who let them in?” asked the boy.

“Nobody. That is the finding.”

“And who saw them?”

“The agency. Afterwards. In an advisory.”

TSU. In Tsu, Mie Prefecture has passed Japan’s first ordinance that can punish abusive customers: up to 500,000 yen, from next April, for ignoring an order to stop. Prolonged or repeated demands for money, goods, apologies or meetings qualify. An expert panel will decide, and may ask for the video or audio.

Somewhere a committee will soon sit in headphones, counting requests for sorry.

BEIJING. And in Beijing, the commerce and science ministries have published a draft list of 40 technologies whose export would be banned or restricted, 14 of them outright, from AI to gene therapy to solar cells. Comments close on 15 November. An interim pre-export registration is already in effect. What performance thresholds bring a model under the rules, the reports do not say.

Beijing has opened a consultation on the rules and, to save everyone time, already started following them.

Chuang Tzu once dreamed he was a butterfly, and on waking could not tell whether he was a man who had dreamed of wings or a butterfly now dreaming of a man. The capitals had the same trouble all week. The robot on the telephone sounded human. The humans may overrule the algorithm only in exceptional circumstances. The agents let themselves in. The fence was for someone who kept still.

Robots: unfenced. Logs: kept for six months.

The novices should knock before entering the kitchen. It is becoming rare.

Yours, unsure which of us is dreaming,

The Monk