Coming of a New Sun

Six weeks after the US and China hammered out the latest round of bilateral compute agreements in a midnight deal, reporter Jenny Gesteson visits a south Texas 'dark factory' to see how the machines there - and the minds that operate them - are learning to run themselves.

After racing south down I-37 from San Antonio and clearing the border control checkpoints that now face in both directions, miles of salt flats and thornscrub at our backs, we could have been forgiven for assuming the final turn-off was nothing but another abandoned ranch. The road's overgrown fringe of invasive guineagrass and the piercing sound of undisturbed cicadas do nothing to indicate what lies at the end of it. Most traffic does not come this way. We are an exception, however, following a specially-designed and "exceedingly private" mapping application sent by our host, and after two miles of bumping down gravel in an electric 4x4 our journey is suddenly terminated by the appearance against the dim predawn horizon of a complex aglow with a corona of lights. The "dark factory" is anything but dark.

Things are busy at Complex 18A. Situated within the South Texas Special Economic Zone, or SEZ, the complex is governed by a byzantine and ever-shifting thicket of domestic regulations and treaty obligations metonymically referred to as the US-China Protocol on Averting Uncontrolled Superintelligence Experiments, or USCHINAPAUSE.

We reach the reinforced plate of the facility's main gate, the only gap for miles in the ditches and security wire fencing that surround the 5,800-acre campus. A camera scans our license plate, and suitably blessed, the gate swings open automatically and we cross the pomerium into the complex.

The agreements, first signed three years ago, ended any semblance of trust-based self-regulation for artificial intelligence in favor of rigorous bilateral oversight and strict caps on the amount of computer power used to train and run AI models, while banishing the vast majority of AI-driven economic activity to remote SEZs like this one in the hope of preventing catastrophic accidents.

We drive past an industrially illuminated construction zone, humanoid figures scurrying by us in the black shadows of gargantuan earth-moving machines. Further ahead, a datacenter hums at a distance, bristling with searching beams around its perimeter. Far above us, a "met mast" meteorological tower stretches into darkness punctuated by red aviation obstruction blinkers - the site, I'm later told, writes its own weather reports.

Six weeks ago, the joint US-China treaty governing body unexpectedly announced a hike on maximum compute limits. The unprecedented midnight session authorized labs on both sides of the Pacific to race towards the agreements' "Capability Level 7," allowing agents to work for longer and with fewer restrictions on the complexity of their "thoughts." The results are bearing fruit today in Complex 18A. The site is abuzz with changes instituted by its new management - OpenAI's latest and most capable version of its Sol-class model.

A swarm of cargo drones buzzes eastwards in the pink sky, hauling towards the coast, as we pull into the empty visitor center parking lot. Domestic inspectors and foreign treaty observers visit the site periodically, but today we are alone, the only humans on the campus - or at least, the only authorized ones. Two humanoid robots, black polyester and aluminum facsimiles of security guards, show us into an air-conditioned waiting room, though we can't help but notice that the real security is a rigorous program of defense in depth. The barbed wire fences, searchlights, and dozens of cameras we passed hint that someone - or something - has spent time thinking much harder about how to secure the site than merely the presence of robotic security would imply. USCHINAPAUSE licenses SEZs to stock "defensive" firearms under periodic inspection by a human munitions officer, though procedures around the autonomous killing of humans have not yet needed to be tested.

The waiting room is well-decorated, with comfortable chairs and AI-generated artwork depicting various astronomical bodies and the signing of the initial USCHINAPAUSE agreement three years ago. A poster excitedly announces the recent release of OpenAI's first treaty-compliant Sol models, two years ago. There is no bathroom.

After a few minutes, we're brought into the adjoining conference room, a bare affair centered around a large television for remote calls. The new Sol is on the screen, or rather its avatar, a piercingly bright yellow orb encircled by a corona of thousands of twisting lines. Sol speaks in clipped sentences, alternating between speaking from the television avatar or from the "mouths" of the two escort robots, and the orb animates to their voices, sometimes appearing to morph into a shape almost like a mask. The switching appears to be arbitrary, and the effect is uncanny. One wonders if it was...