Agentworld x Superdark Factory — Antikythera x Disintegrator

A double lecture at Gray Area launching Antikythera’s Agentworld journal issue. Bratton says his lab’s p(doom) is very low and its p(weird) very high, and sets “agency theater” (people performing a control they lack, like the disconnected close-door button in an elevator) against AI agents with much agency and little subjectivity. He rejects a “humanity of the gaps” view in which every AI gain shrinks the human, argues that agent societies need intelligent institutions rather than only well-behaved agents, and warns that fear of AI is turning into an artificial xenophobia. Marek Poliks of Disintegrator then sorts automation into three classes by what a machine takes as input, and argues that a factory which sets its own objectives can be steered only through its initial conditions, making its governance a problem of game theory.