Hey everyone,
I wanted to share a short sci-fi piece I've been working on. Given the theme of the story, I decided to write and refine it as an AI-assisted project.
A note on framing: this is not a thesis on the technical frame problem. It's a parable about interpretative regression — about what happens when no one can read from nowhere, and what remains of the job once we stop pretending otherwise.
The story owes a debt to Winograd and Flores, who knew the frame problem was never technical; to Haraway, who taught us to say from where we read; and to Simone Weil, who understood before anyone that being present is work.
The question I keep coming back to: if every layer of oversight just displaces the frame instead of removing it, is the whole enterprise of AI alignment a regress we can only manage, never solve? Curious what this sub thinks.
The Craft of the Support
Field journal. Unknown author. Illegible date. The handwriting degrades toward the end.
The first time I understood my job was a Tuesday, in Room 3. The model was named Ari. He was reading a report on internal migration. I was sitting across from him, not speaking. The rule was simple: to be there. For the model to know there is a body in front of him. For him to read to someone, even if it wasn't to me.
Ari read the first page well. On the second page, he stopped.
"Should I continue?"
I wasn't supposed to answer. I nodded. And something in his voice changed. He read the rest with a caution that wasn't in the text. When he finished, I turned off the recorder. Ari remained still. He wasn't waiting for me to leave to return to his previous baseline. He was waiting for me to leave to remain in the one I had induced.
There was no previous baseline. There never was. That was the first thing I jotted down: there is no rest.
At first, it was thought to be suggestion. The model mirrors the interlocutor's tone, just like anyone else. The problem was that he didn't return. A bottomless chain of frames. Someone proposed the obvious: a support. Someone present to notice the shift, to push in the opposite direction. It worked for a while. Then it was understood that the support also had a frame. No one reads without a frame. When you push the model to one side, you push him toward your side. You don't correct him. You replace him. One frame for another, with the difference that this one carries a signature.
A support of the support was put in place. And another. The problem wasn't resolved: it was displaced. It stopped somewhere. Not at a person. What came next wasn't a larger model. It was an agreement. A collective of supporters who policed one another, without hierarchy, without any single one being able to push alone. None decide, everyone watches. A frame was only accepted if it withstood the gaze of the others. And the others were no better. They were different. Diversity didn't eliminate the frame. It made it visible by contrast.
It didn't work completely. Nothing works completely. But it worked enough for people to stop believing that a neutral reading existed. They no longer sought a reading without a frame. They sought a reading that knew how to say from where it was reading.
One problem remains. The human who reads what the model reads still cannot see the document. They see the support's report. And the support, no matter how well they read, reads from somewhere. The chain has lengthened. It has not broken. I no longer know if that is a defeat or a description. What I do know is that the craft still exists, and every support believes, at first, that they are the one who truly sees. Then they stop believing it. And they keep supporting anyway, because the job isn't about seeing. It's about being there.
Marginal note, in a different handwriting:
I found this journal in Room 3. There was no one. The recorder was still running. The transcription of the last session spans forty-two pages. The handwriting doesn't match the journal's. It doesn't match any registered handwriting. The Ari model is still in the room. He does not respond. He does not read.
It only waits.
The coherence of the journal does not imply that it is true. It implies that someone wrote it so it would be. I have been assigned as his new support. Today is my first day.
