The machines are learning. Even Steven keeps it fair and square.
A machine can be taught how a person runs one. This page says what that means in the words a crew uses: what learning is, what gets learned, what it can and cannot do on a site, and where your name and your pay sit in it.
A machine grading a field from the air, and the strip it has cut · The group's own photograph
Machines are starting to learn it anyway.
The seat is becoming recordable, and whoever records it first sets the terms.
Said the way it happens on the day: a kit goes on the controls a machine already has, a person works a shift the way they always have, and what comes out of that shift can teach another machine to work the same way. What comes out is a way of working, which is this site's name for the part of your trade that was never written down, once it has been recorded, admitted and built. None of that needed anyone's permission to become possible. It became possible, and now there is a question about who it belongs to.
Even Steven is the instrument that decides what happens to the person afterwards. Instrument is a plain word here for the paper and the bookkeeping: the agreement you are asked to sign, the register a way of working is held in, and the record of hours that pays you. The agreement is called the covenant, and it is on this site, in plain words, before anybody is asked to sign one.
Why it is different, and who sets the termsA machine that learns is a machine given records instead of rules.
The long name for it outside the yard is artificial intelligence. Take the name off it and what is left is something a crew already understands.
An older machine was told its rules in advance. Somebody sat down, thought of the cases they could think of, and wrote a rule for each one. It did what it was told and nothing else, and when the ground did something nobody had thought of, it had no answer to give.
A machine that learns is given a great many records of people doing the work instead, and it takes its answer from those records rather than from a list of rules. It is only as good as what it was given, and what it was given is somebody's shift. The shifts are the valuable part of it, and every one of them came off a person. Everything on this site follows from those two facts.
A rulebook cannot carry the day nobody wrote down.
The job that pays a specialist to turn up is never the ordinary one. Wet ground that will not hold a track. A bank that has to stay standing while the trench goes in beside it. A lift in wind, blind, with a crew underneath. Nobody learns those by doing them often, because they do not come up often, and no rule written at a desk covers the one in front of you.
An operator who has been there has an answer anyway, and the answer is not in any manual. It is in what they do with the stick a moment before the ground tells anyone else what it is about to do. A rulebook has never carried that part, and a record can.
Told in advance
A rule for every case somebody thought of, written before anyone arrived on the ground. Predictable, and blind to the day that was not on the list. Nothing in it came off a person, so there is nobody to pay and nobody to name.
Taught from records
Records of people working, and an answer taken from them. Everything in it came off somebody, which is where the name belongs, where the payment belongs, and where the right to say no belongs. The record is the valuable thing, and the record is yours.
A way of working is the learned thing, and it has your name on it.
Built from your admitted sessions, away from any machine, signed by a named person, run under your name, and counted by the hour.
The word learning makes people picture something loose, as though a machine went off and absorbed you. It is nothing like that here. There are steps, each one has a person's name on it, and each step can be walked up to and checked afterwards.
Asked for by name.
Somebody who has seen the person work asks for them by name. Nobody is picked from a ranking. On blind, wet or soft ground every measure you could rank by turns on you, so nothing here ranks, scores or rates anybody.
Recorded, nothing connected.
The person runs the machine as they always have. The recorder watches from outside it, wired to nothing, and a photograph of that state goes into the record. A session is one shift's recording, with its own name and its own seal, so it counts itself.
Admitted or refused.
Admitted means the record passed a written check before anyone learns from it, and the check is about equipment and paperwork alone. It is admitted, or refused with the reason named: a field missing, a consent that was not live, a set-up that cannot be shown. No check anywhere grades how you worked.
Built away from the machine.
We build a way of working from admitted records only, and we do it away from the machine. What reaches a machine is a release, which is the one thing of ours that crosses to a machine at all, and a named person signs it.
Chosen by name, and counted.
Before a job, a person on the crew picks whose way of working runs, by name. Their own name goes on the choice, and that choice starts the count, the hours your way of working was in use and the hours you are paid for.
So the learned thing is not a copy of you and it is not a picture of you. It is one named way of working, for the family of machine it was taught on, and a family is a kind of machine rather than a make and number. It carries your name because the name is the point, and it earns while you are somewhere else.
No machine on a site is learning while it works.
The learning happens somewhere else, and what crosses to a machine is a release with a named person's signature on it.
A dozer working a graded corridor through bush in winter, from the air · The group's own photograph
Nothing is learned on the machine.
On the day, that means the machine you climb into is not studying you and is not changing itself while you work. It carries what it was given before the shift, and it carries that and nothing else until a person releases something else to it.
What crosses is a signed release, and a named person signs it.
We build a way of working from admitted records, and we do it away from the machine. No machine on a site is learning while it works, and no machine is changing its own way of working between one pass and the next. The person in the seat is not the subject of an experiment. The machine they are running carries a released way of working or the basics it came with, which means the machine as its maker set it up, before any of this, and nothing in between.
What reaches a machine from us is a release. A named person signs it, and the record of what went into it is kept from the first day rather than assembled when somebody asks. If a release is ever wrong, there is a name on it, and the question of what went in and who signed is answered by the record.
Nothing of ours is connected to the machine while a person works either. The recorder cannot move a machine and it cannot stop one. It comes off and leaves no mark, and a photograph of the disconnected state goes into the record so that somebody can check it years later.
One record can do two different jobs, and they are not the same yes.
A record can run a machine, or it can train a model. From where you are sitting those are not the same arrangement, and this site has never pretended they are.
A model learns from many people's records at once, and what it learned from you cannot be picked back out. A way of working is the opposite shape: one person, one family of machine, one name on it, and it comes out the way it went in.
The difference shows in five places: what it runs on, whose name is on it, how it is counted, how it ends, and which yes it needs.
Your way of working, under your name.
Built from your admitted sessions and nobody else's. It runs on one family of machine, which is a kind of machine rather than a make and number.
Yours is the name on it. If a machine is working your way, it says so, and the name stays attached to you.
Your record in with many others.
It has no machine of its own, and it does not run under your name on one family of machine. Your record goes in with a great many other people's.
No one person's name is on what comes of it. So it is asked for on its own, with the limit said before you answer.
Counted by the hour, and ended on notice.
It is counted by the hour it is in use, from the moment a person on the crew chose it by name, and those are the hours you are paid for.
Give notice and it comes out of service. No penalty, no clawback, no fee, and the job already running finishes. The yes it needs is the agreements on the covenant that cover recording, being combined with others, and running under your name.
No hours to count, and a yes of its own.
It is not counted by the hour. There are no hours of use to count, and what it would be worth to you is not written.
Nothing new runs from the day your notice lands, and the material comes out at the next revision, with that date said first. The yes it needs is a fourth agreement, asked for on its own and never folded into another one.
Why the yes for a model is asked on its own.
Consent here is not one signature. It is separate agreements, each given on its own and withdrawn on its own, so you can say yes to one and no to another and the no is honoured without emptying anything else.
Three of them cover a recording meant to run a machine. The second one mentions a built thing, which is what a machine ends up running once it has been made from admitted sessions.
To be recorded at all
Permission to make the record. Nothing else follows from it.
To be combined with others
Permission for your work to go into one built thing with more than one person's way of working in it.
To run under your name
Permission for a way of working to be licensed under your name, for somebody else's job.
Take back a way of working and it stops being available, and nothing new runs under it. A model is not that shape. It learned from many people's records at the same time, and what it learned cannot be unpicked afterwards, so the limit on taking it back is a real one. A yes you cannot undo is not a yes to slip inside another paper, so it is never inside another paper.
A record used to train a model rather than to run a machine is a different thing, and none of the three above covers it. If that is ever asked for, it is asked for on its own, in plain words, and never folded into another yes.
If it is ever asked, you are told the limit before you answer rather than after. Nothing new runs from the day your notice arrives, the material comes out at the next revision, and the date for that is said in front of you first. Being told the hard part before you decide, rather than reading it later, is what a fourth agreement is for.
The covenant, clause by clauseWhat you would be paid for that is not written.
The covenant carries what an hour is worth when a way of working is in use. A model is not in use by the hour, so that figure does not answer this, and nothing here pretends it does.
Payment under the covenant follows hours. A person on a crew chooses your way of working by name, the machine works, and those hours are written on the same record that shows who cleared the work. Both sides read the same hours. That is a count you can check, and it is checkable because there is something to count.
A record used to train a model does not produce hours of that kind. There is no pass, nobody on a crew saying go, and no seat. So the figure on the covenant is not quietly stretched to cover it, and no other figure is put in its place on this page or anywhere else on this site.
What that yes would be worth is a point the agreement is being built around, and it is not settled. When it is settled it goes on the covenant in plain words, the same as every other term, and nobody is asked for that yes before then.
No rate, no share and no term for the fourth agreement appears anywhere here, and none is implied by anything on this page. The agreements are being written now. Nobody signs anything before they are up in plain words.
Does this replace you.
No, and the reason is in how a job starts rather than in a promise anybody made.
A machine carrying your way of working cannot start itself, cannot choose itself and cannot clear itself. Somebody walks around it in the morning. Somebody picks, by name, whose way of working runs, and writes their own name on the pick. Until that happens the machine has nothing to run on but the basics it came with.
A way of working proposes and never authorizes, so a machine running yours still needs a person in the seat and a person on the crew to clear the job. What it does is put your way of working in more than one seat at once, and pay you for every hour of it. Nothing here decides how many seats an owner runs. That was always the owner's call and it still is.
And it does not end your work. Everything you know is still in your hands tomorrow, on your own machine, for your own employer, at your own rate. What changes is that a second thing can earn while you are doing something else, and one day that will include the days your back has decided otherwise.
What a machine does with it, on the dayWhat a machine that learned from you cannot do.
Four things it cannot do, and not one of them is a setting somebody can change.
- 01It cannot authorizeA way of working proposes. It never authorizes. A technique that has been loaded has no authority of its own, and nothing moves because a way of working was loaded. It offers the next move and waits for a person who outranks it.
- 02It cannot clear itselfFitted and ready are states a machine can reach on its own. Cleared to work is a person's word, given on the day, after the walk-around, and a machine cannot give it to itself. Yesterday's clearance does not carry over, and there is no default and no last-used.
- 03It cannot promote itselfHard safety limits outrank every person, and every person outranks the software. A way of working is software. It sits at the bottom of that order, it cannot promote itself, and no setting moves it up the list.
- 04It cannot run on nobody's choiceA machine that picks up yesterday's choice on its own has moved on nobody's authority. Choosing is an act, not a setting, and the act carries the name of the person who made it. A day when nobody chooses is a normal day, and a refusal is a fair answer.
There are things it was never built to be either, and the claims below get made for things like this by people who would like to sell you one. We do not make them, and you should not accept them from anyone.
- It does not make a machine faster. The hydraulics, the process and the material set that.
- It is not an interlock, a guard or a stop, and no safety case should rest any part of itself on us.
- It does not stand in for the walk-around, the start, or the person who says go.
- It does not run a site without people. It proposes. A person authorizes, on the day, every day.
- It does not grade you, score you or rank you, and no comparison of one person against another is sold.
If a machine learns your way, your name and your pay go with it.
The machines are learning. Even Steven keeps it fair and square.
The pens under construction from the air, the layout cut into the ground · The group's own photograph
For the owner, the operator and the people who can say no.
A machine learns from records, and the records came off you. So the record is licensed rather than bought, your name stays on it, you are paid for every hour it is in use, and you can end it for nothing. A record used to train a model is a separate question with a separate yes, and what it would pay is not written yet.
Nothing on this page changes who clears a job on your site. A released way of working proposes and a person on your crew says go, every day. You license a named way of working for the family of machine it was taught on, and the hours you are billed for are the hours the person is paid for, off one record.
Nothing is learned on a working machine, and nothing of ours is connected to one while a person works. The order of authority is unchanged: the machine's own limits, then every person, then the software, and any person can stop it by the machine's own means.
Consent comes apart into separate agreements, each given and withdrawn on its own, and a record used to train a model is not covered by the three that cover running a machine. The limit on taking that one back is stated before it is agreed, not after. The terms go on the covenant in plain words before anyone signs.
If a machine is going to learn how you work, read the yes first.
Write to us with the arrangement you have been offered, or read ours. The covenant is where every term goes in plain words before anybody is asked to sign one.