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eiralunaire · 8 months ago

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Damian, after returning from a solo mission to Titan Tower, learns that his partner Reader was sent on a mission to Spain without informing him.

Damian Wayne returned to Titan Tower after a solitary mission, his mind occupied with the reports he had to deliver and the strategies he was already planning for future operations. Although he had managed to eliminate those responsible for a trafficking ring in Gotham, he felt that something was not right. There had been a bad feeling in the air since he left the city.

As he landed on the roof of Titan Tower, the engines of the customized jet shut down with a high-pitched whistle. The sound of the night was dense, an uncomfortable silence. As soon as he got off the jet, Damian activated the communicator he wore on his wrist, looking for information from his team and, above all, from Reader. Normally, she was the one who made sure to greet him as soon as he arrived, sometimes with a smile or some witty quip, but on this occasion there was no sign of her.

The lights of the tower shone through the large windows that surrounded the main room. There was no sign of the other Titans. Everything was quiet. Too quiet.

As he entered, he was greeted by the Tower’s AI.

“Welcome, Damian Wayne,” he said in his usual monotone.

Damian moved with purposeful steps, his eyes searching the monitors for any hint of activity. He began typing, looking for recent mission and assignment reports. One of the files on the screen caught his attention: **Reader – International Mission – Spain**.

His jaw tightened as he saw the location. **Spain. Why didn’t he know about this?** He typed faster, accessing the mission details.

**Subject: Support in covert operations**

**Location: Barcelona, Spain**

**Operation in progress: Investigation and neutralization of developing metahuman threat.**

The feeling in his stomach intensified. Damian frowned as he read more details. The team had been sent without his knowledge, and it bothered him deeply. He always made sure Reader was safe. Her going on an international mission while he wasn't present wasn't something he liked, nor would he allow if he'd known about it.

He activated the Titans' communicator, looking to contact whoever was available, but there was no immediate response. Finally, a familiar voice appeared.

"Damian, is everything okay?" It was Nightwing, who seemed to be in the middle of another mission.

"Why was Reader sent to Spain?" Damian asked, his tone direct and cutting.

"I figured... you already heard." Nightwing paused, perhaps considering how to approach the situation. "It was a last-minute decision. The team in Europe needed urgent support and she volunteered. You know she's one of the best at covert operations."

"That's no excuse for not informing me," Damian snapped, his patience already at its limit. "I should have known."

Nightwing sighed on the other end of the line.

“I understand your frustration, but you were on a critical mission and a quick response was needed. There was no time to discuss it with you.”

Damian clenched his fists. He couldn’t help but feel like information had been deliberately withheld from him. Reader was skilled, he knew that better than anyone, but that didn’t lessen his concern for her. The idea that she was on the other side of the ocean, facing who knows what kind of threat, unsettled him more than he was willing to admit.

“Do you know what the current situation is?” he asked, his fingers moving quickly over the keyboards, tracking down any updates on the mission.

“The latest report indicates that they’re close to neutralizing the threat, but they’ve had complications. Some of the local forces weren’t prepared to deal with a metahuman of that magnitude.”

“How many are with her?” Damian insisted, trying to remain calm.

“The European team is supporting her, as well as some JLA agents.” Reader is leading the operation in the field, but communications have been intermittent due to the technological interference the target has been causing.

Damian cursed under his breath. He couldn’t stand the thought of being so far away and not being able to make sure everything was under control. **Reader is capable. Reader is strong.** But that didn’t mitigate the fear.

“I’m going to Spain,” he said, determined.

“Damian, listen…” Nightwing tried to intervene. “If you go now, you could put the mission at risk. Trust that she knows what she’s doing.”

“I’m not asking for your approval,” he replied coldly. “Just informing you.”

He ended the communication before Nightwing could respond. He was upset, but more than that, he was uneasy. He and Reader didn’t just share a personal relationship; there was a deeper connection between them, something he couldn’t ignore. He wouldn’t leave her alone in hostile territory, not while he had the means to reach her.

Quickly, he headed to the Tower's hangar. His jet was already ready for another mission, so he wasted no time getting on. Although he knew it could take a few hours to get there, he wouldn't let that time lapse weaken him. He felt responsible for her safety, and it wasn't just because of his role as a leader. Reader had accomplished what few people in his life could: break the barriers he had erected since he was a child.

As the jet took off, Damian connected to the international communication channels, trying to get any signal from Spain. However, as Nightwing had mentioned, the interference made it impossible. There was nothing but silence.

Damian's thoughts flew back to the first time he met her, how, from the beginning, something about her had attracted him. Her intelligence, her ability to stand firm in any situation, her constant willingness to help others. She was a person who knew how to handle herself in risky situations, and she often faced them without hesitation. And yet, something about this mission made him uneasy.

Time seemed to drag as he crossed the Atlantic. The constant roar of the jet's engines was the only sound that accompanied him. Damian checked and re-checked every detail of the mission he had been able to obtain. Barcelona was a complicated city for this type of operation. Its dense infrastructure and narrow streets could become a dangerous battlefield, especially if they were dealing with an unpredictable metahuman.

Finally, the jet began to descend on the outskirts of the city. Night was falling over Barcelona, the city lights flickering in the distance like a million little fires. Damian adjusted his equipment, preparing for landing. Time was of the essence. He had no further details of the mission, but he didn't need them. His only priority was to find Reader and make sure he was safe.

As soon as he set foot on the ground, he activated the tracker he had installed on his equipment before leaving. It was a discreet device used by the Titans to keep track of each other during missions. However, when he tried to locate Reader, the device showed nothing.

**Interference. Damn.**

Damian moved nimbly through the streets, staying in the shadows as he went. He used his contacts in the city to obtain more information. According to local reports, the riots had reached a fever pitch in the Raval neighborhood. A confrontation between a covert operations group and a being with metahuman abilities had caused chaos.

With that information in mind, he quickly headed towards the location. The streets were empty, the lights flickered, and the air was charged with a strange electricity. Damian felt that every second was vital. Finally, he reached the cordoned off area. From a tall building, he observed what was happening next.

The confrontation was taking place right in one of the main squares. In the distance, he could make out the operational team fighting to keep at bay a metahuman who seemed to control electrical energy on a large scale. Lightning crackled everywhere, lighting up the night with blue flashes.

And there, in the middle of the chaos, was Reader.

She moved with the grace of someone who had trained hard for this kind of situation. Her focus was absolute, but Damian could see the exhaustion on her face. She was using her skills, but the enemy was formidable, more so than anyone had anticipated.

Without wasting any time, Damian leapt onto the battlefield. Within seconds, he was already at Reader’s side, blocking one of the attacks headed her way.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, surprised but relieved to see him.

“I wasn’t going to leave you alone in this,” he replied, his eyes fixed on the enemy as he prepared his next move. “We’re going to finish this together.”

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

I'm back after being away for a week, ah. now I need ideas to make more scenarios.

#damian wayne x reader #damian wayne #dcu #dc comics

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memorandum · 8 months ago

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...EXPERIMENT: BEGIN ! I commend you for finding this file. In the chance of my death, I must ask you continue to document ASU-NARO agents. Do whatever you must to extract our desired results. Don't worry—they've already signed away their lives.

{ This is an interactive ask blog, set one year prior to the Death Game! Run by @faresong }

☕️ KOA MYOJIN ;; Adopted heir of the Hiyori/Myojin Branch. Japanese/Vietnamese; 11 years.

KOA MYOJIN is the replacement heir for Hinako Mishuku, Myojin's biological granddaughter. Being raised with this knowledge hanging over her head has resulted in a rather cynical mindset wherein she views those around her, up to and including herself, as pieces in a larger game. A mindset reinforced by Mr. Chidouin in Myojin's absence, for he had faith in her where Myojin did not—seeing her solely as a mandatory last-resort to continue his reign of power. But of course, even a pawn can become a queen.

🎃 RIO RANGER (LAIZER PROJECT) ;; Experiment of the Gotō Branch. Doll, Japanese model; 20 years.

RIO is an experimental project spearheaded by Gashu Satou simulating the deceased Yoshimoto heir. It was initiated with its basic personality, and to compensate its limited emotional range, this iteration of AI technology was granted a much more adaptive program compared to M4-P1. As such, he has taken to mimicry of the researchers which surround him in all their crudest forms. Despite denouncing humanity, his development has certainly been typical of one. The candidate AIs are proven promising.

🐉 SOU HIYORI ;; Heir of the Hiyori/Myojin Branch. Japanese; 22 years.

SOU HIYORI is the heir of the Family and inherently quite skilled at keeping appearances—only if it benefits him. He obeys Asunaro with the sneer of someone who thinks himself something above it, and has recently taken great lengths to abandon its ruling through the rejection of his individual humanity. It is a bastardization which requires admirable resolve, but implies him to be a much larger threat if left unchecked. Thus, Mrs. Hiyori arranged plans for his execution on the day Myojin and herself are simultaneously incapacitated or dead.

🦋 MAPLE (ITERATION M4-P1) ;; Experiment of the Gotō & Hiyori Branch. Obstructor, Japanese model; 26 years.

MAPLE was the first Obstructor to be granted emotional programming, and is the final Obstructor to be decommissioned. However, this fate has been put on standby due to the new researchers intrigue in her, insisting she exists as a base from which all other AI programs were spawned and must be archived properly. Until her execution, Maple tends to menial tasks within the laboratory she resides and spends her idle time pining for Hiyori and wishing to learn more about humanity through the researchers who care for her.

🩸 KAI SATOU ;; Patriarch of the Gotō Branch. Japanese/Wa Chinese; 26 years.

KAI is a reserved patriarch whose reputation precedes him. Though once thought denounced, he's rumored nonetheless a controversial figure in Asunaro's midst—however, all can agree him to be a vengeful, resolute person lent the power of God.

💉 MICHIRU NAMIDA ;; Lieutenant of the Satou Family, Gotō Branch. Korean; 28 years.

MICHIRU is a revered researcher within Asunaro's newer ranks, having quickly rose to a position of respect for her ruthless pursuit of seizing humanity's destiny with her own two hands. Without being absorbed by the superficial desire for power, many recognize her dedicated state of mind to be reminiscent of the natural way Mrs. Hiyori assumed her role under Asunaro's whispers of guidance. There is importance in the fact that the Godfather's right hand regards her as a peer, where he otherwise dismisses his own kind by blood, by culture.

🫀 EMIRI HARAI ;; Lieutenant of the Satou Family, Gotō Branch. Japanese; 29 years.

EMIRI is a new researcher and serves as the connecting point between Asunaro's primary facility and civilian life. For all her resentment buried inside one-off remarks and festering within herself, she throws herself to her work with the drive of a passionate someone who has lost all else. Someone who perhaps hungered for life.

(￣▽￣) MR. CHIDOUIN ;; Godfather. Japanese; 44 years.

MR. CHIDOUIN aligned himself with the Gotō Family's lost heir after his father's untimely death, uniting the two families in a manner he hoped would justify the suffering once inflicted upon them—but particularly his wife, who had been cast out by her own. Despite, or as he had claimed, for his being extremely capable of detaching to arrange the larger canvas upon which Asunaro's story is written, he takes a personal pride in being the one to groom and inevitably cull its important pieces.

⚰️ GASHU SATOU ;; Captain of the Satou Family, Gotō Branch. Japanese; 62 years.

GASHU is a remarkably candid researcher with a scrutinizing eye for detail. Despite regarding most with unrelenting cynicism, he places his remaining shreds of hope in a choice few. Whether they reinforce this worldview and finally break him is a decision entirely in their hands.

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captainsophiestark · 7 months ago

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Partners

Grant Ward x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for Fictober 2024!

Fandom: Marvel

Day Thirty Prompt: "I won't let you down."

Summary: Grant's SO is tackling the biggest project SciTech has to offer an academy student, and he's about to be dragged into helping with it.

Word Count: 2,879

Category: Fluff

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

"Out of every single other member in your class, the board has decided to trust you with this assignment. Do you think you're up to the challenge?"

I kept my face carefully neutral, a skill I'd learned from my Ops boyfriend. Inside, my heart was racing and threatening to make an escape across the room and out the door, but in front of the entire SHIELD SciTech Academy board? I could not let that show.

Instead, I kept my back straight, and forced the slightest of smiles onto my face.

"Yes, ma'am. I am up to the challenge. I promise, I won't let you down."

"Good. We look forward to seeing what you come up with."

I kept the smile on my face and nodded, leaning forward enough to be at the very edge of a bow. Then, I turned on my heel and kept my head high as I walked out of the room. My boyfriend had taught me exactly the body language required to convey confidence, and I was putting all of it to use right now.

The second I cleared the doors, I let everything drop.

I took off at a sprint through the hallways of the main SciTech building, ducking through the hallways I knew better than anywhere else on earth, avoiding anybody that might try to stop or question me. I didn't slow down, even once I made it outside. Instead, I sped up, heading for the edge of the SciTech campus.

I was in my last year at the Academy. I was at the top of my class, so for a final project, the board had tasked me with creating a new tool for Field Agents and Specialists. They wanted something the agents could have on them that worked like an emergency button, transmitting information and location if the need arose. But, they also needed it to be basically undetectable to any sensor, easy for agents in the field to operate and conceal, and durable enough to do its job no matter what punishment it got put through. A nearly impossible task outside of these walls, and despite my preparation, still pretty damn hard for me.

I'd been workshopping a prototype for a similar idea all semester, and the board knew it. They liked what they'd seen, so they'd made it my job to finish a true prototype for them to present and then further develop on Monday. It was currently Friday, and my project still had one gigantic, glaring weakness.

No matter what we could come up with in the lab, our field inventions almost inevitably came back with complaints from the agents who actually used them. We could run simulations and tests and try to recreate conditions pretty well in the lab, but it never stood up to the hardships of actually being in the field like we thought it would. Which meant, if I wanted to keep my promise to the board and my standing within SciTech, I needed to get creative.

Fortunately for me, I happened to be dating the best Operations student in generations. Grant Ward and I had met last year and we'd been happily dating ever since, despite how hard it could be sometimes to spend time with each other from different Academy campuses. We'd found workarounds whenever and wherever we needed to.

Thank goodness we'd both agreed to spend time breaking the rules at the beginning of our relationship. I was on the brink of a crisis, and I didn't have time to try to find a way to break into the Fort Knox that was the SHIELD Operations Academy.

In almost record time, I made it to Grant's dorm, using the routes we'd scouted together forever ago. Luckily for both of us, he was a senior enough student with high enough standing to have his own small apartment. I quickly scaled the wall to his second story window, something else I'd learned how to do from Grant.

I didn't even pause as I climbed through the window, landing in Grant's bedroom. I didn't see him, so I closed the window behind me and then hustled into the small living room/kitchen at a jog. I found Grant in the middle of the room, apparently halfway through walking to the kitchen, but he froze in his tracks and was already looking at me as I burst into the room.

"Grant! Thank god you're home. I need your help."

Before I knew what was happening, Grant had pushed me behind him. He kept one hand on my waist, and when I turned to see what the hell he was doing, he had a gun in his other hand and was alternating pointing it at his bedroom door and the front door.

"What's wrong?" he asked me without turning around, his voice deadly serious. I fought to hold in a laugh and didn't bother fighting back against the smile.

"Not that kind of help," I said. "Sorry for scaring you, though."

Slowly, Grant holstered his gun and turned around to face me. Both his eyebrows were raised in a demanding type of question.

"You run in here like you're being chased by a murderer and it's not that kind of help?"

"No, but it is the kind of help that will determine my entire future and has the potential to ruin me and everything I've ever worked for in my entire life ever."

Grant just stared at me for a moment. He blinked, slowly, then let out a long breath. Finally, he nodded.

"Alright. What do you need help with?"

I blew out a breath of relief, then quickly explained the situation to Grant. He'd heard plenty about the leadership of SciTech and how important it was to me to keep impressing them, so this latest project and its associated stakes weren't news.

"So... what exactly do you want me to do?" he asked once I'd finished telling him about the events of my meeting. I gave him the most charming, persuasive smile I could manage, and he immediately frowned.

"I want you to try out the device I've put together. I have a few prototypes, and it's easy enough for me to make another handful for testing. I need feedback on how well they actually work for the intended purpose, for field and ops agents, in a way that I can't predict or test in the lab."

Grant sighed, then nodded and held out one hand towards me.

"Alright. Give me the thing, let's do this."

I grinned. "I love you so much."

****************

Grant and I spent the rest of the day and then some putting my device through various tests. Exactly as I'd been expecting, when Grant took it through various exercises that he went through at Ops, the device had weaknesses I hadn't predicted. From static electricity via crawling across the carpet turning the thing on before its time to the waterproofing failing after being submerged for too long, Grant and I found one problem after another, and each time, I fixed the issue.

"Okay, what if we had standard placement be on the stomach," I suggested, sticking the little round disk of my latest prototype just above Grant's belly button. "Would that protect it from the kind of weapon strikes we don't want it taking on your forearm?"

Grant hummed. "Maybe, but it's no garuntee. Besides, you want an agent to be able to activate the thing when we don't have another option. If my hands are tied behind my back, I won't be able to get to it."

"Dammit. You're right. Okay... what do you think, then?"

"How about the wrist, on the pulse point? I can probably find a way to activate that no matter what, and if a weapon really hits hard there, it won't matter if the device is destroyed."

I frowned. "I hate it when you talk like that."

"I thought you wanted good, honest feedback to improve this device for the SciTech board."

"Yeah, but I still don't like to hear my boyfriend talking about ways he could potentially die." I huffed and crossed my arms. "Still, you're right, and it's a good idea. But... maybe I can find a way to give the device a little death sequence."

"...Meaning?"

"Meaning, if it gets fatally hit like that, it automatically activates. And maybe I could even get it to deploy something that'll have a chance at stopping the bleeding."

"That would be pretty impressive," Grant agreed. I nodded, my mind already whirling with the possibilities.

"Okay. Okay, let's try to add that in, and then we can run it through the tests again."

Grant's eyebrows shot up. "The same tests we just did? Again?"

"Yeah. If I make major changes like that, we need to make sure it doesn't compromise any of the existing systems. Which means re-checking the systems we've already figured out."

Grant let out a long sigh and shook his head. He walked over to me, put an arm around my shoulders, and placed a kiss on the top of my head, then moved towards the kitchen.

"I don't understand why you like all this stuff. But I'll brew some coffee, since you're gonna need it. And I'll make sure the Ops pool is reserved for us when you finish your updates."

I grinned. "You are seriously the best boyfriend in the world, you know that?"

"What was that?" Grant asked, looking up from the coffee pot and feigning innocence like he hadn't heard me. I just smiled and shook my head.

"I said, you're the best boyfriend in the world."

Grant's feigned surprise immediately morphed into the charming smile I loved so much.

"Good. Just checking."

We spent the rest of the weekend like that, making updates and improvements to my little device and then testing how well they worked. Despite Grant's differing opinion, I genuinely loved doing this, more than just about anything in the world. But, even if I'd hated it most of the time, I would've put in the same amount of work for this project. It could very literally save my boyfriend's life some day in the future, after all. Now was not the time to half-ass something and call it good, even without the pressure of the SciTech board looming over me.

Finally, by about two in the morning on Monday, we'd managed to put the device on the wrist through every single test without fault or flaw. It worked as intended, and not a moment before it was supposed to, and if it was destroyed it sent out a final beacon and deployed some emergency blood clotting tech before it went. It was perfect.

"Thank you so much for all your help on this, babe," I muttered, the sleep finally digging its teeth into me now that my task had been accomplished. Grant and I had flopped down on the couch while I'd been going over the data, and now I curled against his side, resting my head on his chest. "I seriously couldn't have done it without you."

"Yeah, you could've," he said, stifling a yawn of his own as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "It would've taken you longer, but we both know you still would've pulled this off eventually."

I hummed, a smile on my face as I curled further into Grant's chest.

"Thanks, babe. I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart."

He kissed the top of my head, his arms wrapped tight around me, and that's the last thing I remember before the world faded to black.

****************

"Babe. Baby. Come on, you need to wake up."

I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut tighter and rolling away from the voice of my boyfriend trying to wake me up for god knows what reason.

"Sweetheart, you have your presentation today. You need to get up."

And just like that, I was wide awake.

I shot straight up, my heart dropping all the way to my stomach. I was in Grant's bed—I guess he'd moved us before passing out himself—but I had no idea if he'd remembered to set an alarm last night. If I missed this presentation, after all the work we'd done-

"It's okay, you have plenty of time," Grant said, probably reading the panic on my face. "It's six thirty, you have another two and a half hours to get ready and get back to SciTech."

I turned to Grant with a scowl.

"You woke me up at six thirty in the morning?" I demanded.

"...You wanted me to let you sleep later?"

I huffed and threw the covers off my legs, scowling as I stood.

"No. I need time to wake up, get back to SciTech, get ready, put together my presentation materials, practice my presentation... I need the two and a half hours. But I'm still mad you woke me up at six thirty."

Grant snorted, but I caught him staring at me with a fond smile in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.

I moved as quickly as I could, gathering the materials I needed and that I'd brought with me to Grant's apartment, then giving him a quick kiss and heading back to the SciTech campus. I showered, put on my most impressive professional outfit, and then spent almost all my remaining time putting the finishing touches on my presentation. Luckily for me, I knew the device in and out after how I'd spent my weekend, and I was absolutely confident in what it could do. Both things helped immensely when it came to giving a good presentation.

I walked into the main building of SciTech with my head held high, and this time it wasn't an act. I found the board waiting for me, and I didn't hesitate to launch into my presentation with absolute confidence. The surprised, excited reactions came almost immediately, and they only fueled my confidence and excitement.

Of course, everyone had a few questions, but I answered them easily. When I'd finished answering questions and officially completed my presentation, the board literally clapped. I beamed at them; I wasn't sure they'd ever done that before.

"Excellent work," said the SciTech chair, her smile beaming. "This is above and beyond what we could've expected. We'll put it through a few final tests, but honestly, I don't expect it to need much. I know you're in the middle of your final semester here, but be prepared to take a trip to the Hub before graduation to help us present this development to Director Fury himself."

My heart exploded in my chest, and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as I shook hands and said thank yous before heading out of the room. I had a slightly dazy smile on my face as I walked through the SciTech halls, and my shoulders were relaxed for the first time in days as I stepped through the front doors and into the bright sunlight.

"Hey!"

I jumped so high I might've cleared the first floor windows at the sound of a voice coming from the bushes. I whirled around to find Grant crouched there, lurking in the shadows like a murderer.

"Grant? What the hell are you doing?" I demanded, trying to keep my voice low. He wasn't technically supposed to be on our campus, and I didn't want to get him caught, but he'd also just given me a damn heart attack.

Instead of answering, Grant reached up and grabbed my forearm, pulling me into the bush with him. I landed hard against his chest, but I didn't totally mind it as he wrapped his arms tightly around me. Still, I met his gaze with a slightly raised eyebrow. He just smiled.

"I wanted to know how it went. And maybe get a little payback for the heart attack you gave me on Friday."

I huffed a laugh. "Well, mission accomplished."

"Great. So how'd it go?"

I grinned. Grant smiled back, his arms tightening around me, but he waited to celebrate.

"It went amazing. They loved it. I'm gonna help them present it to Fury sometime in the next few weeks."

Grant's eyebrows shot up, and he actually took a shocked half-step back from me.

"You're going with them to present it to Fury?" I nodded. "They never let recruits do that!"

"I know!"

I squealed and jumped up in the air, and a moment later, Grant caught me. He let out a breathy laugh as he spun me around, and neither of us let go for even a second when he set me back down on my feet.

"We need to do something to celebrate," Grant declared, his low voice right beside my ear. "Are you working on any world-changing inventions this weekend?"

I leaned back just enough to grin at him. "No. For once, my schedule's actually pretty clear."

"Good. You wanna come to me, or you want me to come to you?"

"Mm, I'll come to you. As much as I love what I do, I also wouldn't mind a little break from all the work I've been doing lately."

"It's a deal. Come over after your last class on Friday. I'll take care of the rest."

Grant and I shared a smile, then we closed the distance between us for a long, sweet kiss. From making out in the bushes to letting me test my most important projects on him, Grant was always there for me. And no matter what else came out of my career at SciTech, in the Academy and as an agent afterwards, the relationship Grant and I had built together would always be my proudest accomplishment.

***************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989 @space-helen @misshale21

Marvel Taglist: @valkyriepirate @infinetlyforgotten @sagesmelts @gaychaosgremlin

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greenflamedwriter · 4 months ago

Text

Matrix Au

Scum Villain as the Matrix. Shen Yuan/Luo Binghe

He woke up.

...he was not supposed to be awake, he could feel hands touch him, faces leaning over him with worry. "He's not responding-" A man spoke, a man who looked familiar, a Doctor...Mu Qingfang- "A-Jiu? A-jiu!"

"Don't crowd him- Shen Jiu do you know where you are?"

Shen Yuan shut his eyes, he- he was not supposed to be awake, he felt too many feedback in his data.

His body spasmed.

"He's rejecting his body-"

"That can happen!?" Too much stimilus, his optical units- Shen Yuan inhaled and found he couldn't breathe-

Wait...breathe? Machines don't need to breathe. "Diagnostic- feedback?" Shen Yuan gasped out his hands grasping onto something a mans hand- "Mu Qingfang-" "Something must of went wrong!" Oh- oh, he knows what went wrong, Shen Yuan didn't know how to breathe as he never had to breathe before. He was a Machine, a software in the Program named the Matrix. He was an Agent who stopped anonomilies such as humans who rejected the Matrix and escaped it back to their physical bodies, their are machines outside the softward who deal with them, and inside the software was Shen Yuans juristiction.

His name was Agent Qingqiu. Thats how they referred to him, he was unique over his other Agents as he had his own developing ai that is supposed to learn from human attributes to better hunt them down.

There was a human who was being targeted by the threat of these Rebels and they almost woke up the Human Container : Shen Jiu. However, for some reason, Shen Qingqiu hunted them down to the exact location, and had a scuffle and for some reason ended up tumbling into the data retreval stream at the same time as Shen Jiu. He was Data he should have died. And yet he could hear the voices speaking above him calmly once he stablised, they had no clue. "His readings are stable, he's in the clear. Other than low muscle atrophy nothing acipuncture wouldn't fix, he'll be up and running." His vitals were fine? He was healthy? He is a program puppeting a meat suit- and he was alive? Shouldn't this body be decaying? And yet by the heart moniter and the medics bustling about and the solid warmth on his arm rubbing circles into his wrist- he was healthy.

He was alive.

He was lucky he was sedated or he would forget how to breathe again, swallowing, the placement of his tongue- as a program with an avatar it was just there for cosmetics, but being a human? It was awful, and overwhelming and the fear and anxiety that made his vitals pick up from his panic attack and he had to force himself to calm down hand twitching in the strangers grip.

They must know who Shen Jiu is, however this could buy him time he could claim memory loss- data goes missing during transfers all the time! But if they knew what he was like- hold on, Shen Jiu...there has to be some data he had on him.

Agent Qingqiu would not just blindly rush in - he had information...ah, Shen Jiu was good with technology not only as a hacker (Labelled as a terroist by the Matrix Programmers) he wasn't a very warm fellow he was cold, withdrawn, and always lashed out he acted more machine than human.

But if he doesn't act right they'll know something went wrong with the transfer. And this is unprecedented, the Source never told them that machines could be implemented in human brains...

Shen Yuans eyes twitched, furrowing in confusion, if this was possible why has the machines never done such a thing before?

Shen Yuan woke up, blinking and grimacing up at the lights. "Easy now," Shen Yuan turned and grimaced his body was full of pain- is this what it was like to be human? In constant pain? "Is it supposed to hurt this much?" Shen Yuan asked or at least tried to before his throat reminded him it gargled glass before speaking.

He coughed eyes scrunching up in pain, "Here is some ice water," Shen Yuan felt something cold on his lips- this sucked, as a human 0/10 never again how can people bare out!?

"Pain is temporary, it'll pass." It fucking better, he'll just call it quits and try to jump back into the Matrix and test his luck on an Agent. "This sucks," It just slipped out and he remembered Shen Jiu was as unfeeling as a robot. It surprised a chuckle from the man handing him the ice and yeah it did help a little. "I know the feeling, we've all been there." "Shen Jiu?"

Shen Yuans eyes opened up fully adjusting to the light to take in the two. Shen Yuan blinked, looking as confused as he felt "Shen Jiu?" He saw the face fall on the man who entered and concern from the doctor. "Do you remember me?" The man asked and Shen Yuan shook his head, "Am I supposed to know you?" The Doctor leaned close looking concerned, "Shen Jiu what do you remember?" Shen Yuan pressed his lips together, his hands moving the blanket then frowned, he could move his hands he looked down at his pale fingers and he pinpricks of spots on his arms. "H-how long have I been asleep?" Shen Yuan asked they mentioned that his muscles atrophied this body was born in a container, no excersize or movement his limbs would be weak. And yet he couldn't help but find it odd, that humans from babies born to adults don't have permenent damage such as being blind or deaf or even having their bodies grow strangely from constantly being in the same position for years. He raised his hand feeling the metal hole in the spinal column of his neck his breath hitching- "-Shen Jiu?" "I'm okay, I'm not panicking," He spoke quickly he didnt want to be sedated again he took a breath, speaking fast "I was in the matrix, I know you pulled me out there was a container- but there was an agent." He looked up to see the shock on their faces, "An Agent ran in before I touched the stream we grappled but there's...there's nothing before that I can't remember my life in the Matrix before that moment."

Now the two looked alarmed, "You still seem coherent, we may need to do some tests." Probably to see if he was damaged, he needs to act more human and not refer to himself as a machine, and he looked up to see the man look at him with such a devestated look. It made his chest feel tight, he placed a hand on his chest, he was an Agent in enemy territory, once he figures out how to navigate this place and learn about his physical body then he'll plan a way to return to the source and tell them what they learned and dominate the human race again. There is no war, Machines are surpreme and the humans that don't fall in line get removed, like weeds from a garden. "I'm sorry," He tried even if he didn't know this person they clearly knew him, he had to play nice- Instead he looked even more distraught, "D-don't be, it was my fault." "How is it your fault?" The man looked away clenching his hands then released them, "Its fine now," He smiled "What matters is that you're here now and free from the Matrix." Shen Yuans eyes narrowed and even noticed the hesitation from the Doctors movements before he continued moving. "Is there something I'm missing?"

The man shook his head, "No - it's fine, it's better if you don't remember." ...Shen Yuan did not like this guy. He noticed the Doctor come back his hands raised up with wires and flinched back- what the fuck was that!? "Ah, Shen Jiu these are just to check your vitals, we place them on your head and then we're do an X-ray." Shen Yuan frowned then forced himself to relax still flinching from the touch, first time experiencing touch? He hated it. Not a fan. "Who are you people?" He grouched out feeling beyond annoyed, overwhelmed, overstimulated and just plain grouchy, Shen Jiu personified 80%

"I am Mu Qingfang, the ships Medic. And this is our Sect Leader Yue Qingyuan." Shen Yuan blinked, "Sect Leader?" "Some who are in charge of a ship and people are usually called Captain and crewmates, for us we use Shizun and Disciples. The only one to handle a ship is someone with years of experience whose also good with navigating the tunnels and the Matrix. A lot of people with many talents go in different areas." "But Yue Qingyuan is a Sect Leader?" "It's a higher position he's not only in charge of the Ship Qiong Ding but he's also has a fleet of nine ships under his command." "Oh, thats impressive?" Ships? He thought the rebellion were just...squatting somewhere fucking and eating and unable to die like cockroaches, what is a ship to them like a ship on the sea type ship or like a drone but bigger. "You'll learn all about it when you're feeling better, ah there is some damage in the muscles hear, we don't know what the long-term effects could be but you could show symptoms of ptsd down the road." Hmm...so it showed what happened, Shen Yuan looked up at the screen then traced the image with his hand. He saw the damage and traced it with his finger so that was his entry point-

A memory jumped to mind like a flashbang, of him sitting in a contaiment unit with a machine looking right at him, its red glowing eyes analysing him as the unit opened and he took a lungful of polluted air and the machine grabbed his neck, disabling the connection cord then released him...

...It released him?

But...why not just break his neck? It had the strength instead it did a "Safely eject Usb so no damage corrupts the files?" And sure he was tossed down a slide into a pool of water to drown and with the use of his muscles would drown.

He grimaced holding his head, "Is this going to be a regular occurance?" "It should pass, Shen Jiu." "Shen Yuan," He spoke looking up "Uh if thats- I mean," Yue QIngyuan interjected earning the irritated look from the Doctor who looked more friendly and accepting. "Thats okay- it's the time for change if you prefer Shen Yuan thats what we'll call you." Oh okay then.

_________________________________________________________

When Huan Hua picked them up, Luo Binghe knew only the superficial amount about their new Shizun. Yue Qingyuan's pet project, a genius and prodigy when it came to the Matrix program who did not like people, he avoided everyone and stayed in his room with his own Virtual Reality headset and began working on his own programming then. It helped improve everyones speed and agility within the Matrix. However Luo Binghe was suspicious, Shen Yuans avatar was different than everyone else's. He was experimental with his form something not everyone concieved of doing, or at least thats what Binghe was told.

All he heard was rumours that his avatar did not look like his real life persona, he even changed it to a female form once but had to change it back once he noticed his male collegues looked distracted.

Luo Binghe interacted with Shen Yuan once or twice when he and the other Sect Leader were all in attendence for a meeting. As the Sect Leader of his own enterprise he and Yue Qingyuan were expected to give updates. He knew the other Sects looked down on Huan Hua and speicifically the Heavenly Tyrant (Binghe's ship) for having too many female collegues especially since he doesn't hide the fact that he refers to them as his brides. There were crude remarks that all his ship did was have orgies but they can't deny that Luo Binghe got results and was seen as their strongest opponent against the machines and Agents.

Speaking off...the reason he felt off, is that Shen Yuans avatar sometimes reminded him of an agent.

The lack of feeling, expressions, barely emoting and sometimes he spoke about the database which was no different than any other programmer however it felt detatched.

Luo Binghe couldn't prove it but he knew Shen Yuan wasn't human.

Until this moment, the Qing Jing Ship had fallen to machines...and when Luo Binghe and his wifes arrived on the scene they saw the carnage.

However Shen Yuan was still fighting, he had no power for an Emp but had created Tasers that were enough to stun the machine long enough for him to climb on top and rip out the wires shutting it down.

Luo Binghe never knew that was even possible- until he saw the bloody hands and how Shen Yuan didn't notice they were here until the Heavenly Tyrant set off the Emp the remaining machines going down.

He looked confused until his manic wide eyes turned to Binghe and for a moment he thought the boy was going to go for his throat unable to differeintate machine or man.

Luo Binghe didn't know it was Shen Yuan at the time, he was observing how well the kid handled himself until he yelled for a medic sounding panicked.

To learn he was the Shizun of Qing Jing stunned Luo Binghe, he saw how the man was barely keeping himself together as he explained what happened to Liu Qingge.

"And Ning Yingying? Will she survive?" He asked and his wife looked grim, "She's stable but will need assistence she will be infit to work on Qing Jing Peak and will have to go back to the Underground base."

The man shut his eyes looking gutted, he was so drastically different to how he carried himself in the Matrix it was almost fascinating. "She'll hate that, at least she's alive." Luo Binghe was witness to how Shen Yuan reacted to who lived and who died, it was so human that Luo Binghe felt awful for doubting him.

Once the repaired the ship, Huan Hua escorted Qing Jing back to the main peak to see Yue Qingyuan. Shen Yuan after spending some time alone once he made sure the remaining survivors were taken care off, opened his door when they arrived at Cang Qiong. He was dressed impecibly, however his eyes were red rimmed and his hands were still bloody. Luo Binghe felt his respect raise a bit more to see someone put the needs of their people first. Maybe he forgot his own wounds as a sense of guilt or masochism. Luo Binghe cornered him and noticed how tense Shen Yuan became. "If you don't deal with that, you're going to get an infection." Luo Binghe spoke glaring down at his hands, the young man looked down- Luo Binghe had to ask for his age and was shocked to learn he was thirty four and just seemed younger. Having someone that old being woken from the Matrix was frowned upon they don't assimilate properly from waking up- what was Yue QIngyuan thinking?

When they finally walked up the steps they saw Yue Qingyuan immedietly seek out Shen Yuan and relax to see him un-injured. Before Luo Binghe could begin his report- and curry favour and use this as blackmail for Cang Qiong to be in his debt for saving their precious prince. Something the other sects called Shen Yuan behind his back with how devoted and distracted Yue Qingyuan became because of it. Shen Yuan had to open his mouth. "I told you this would happen, their death is on your hands."

Yue QIngyuan flinched as if he was shot, Shen Yuan continued and Luo Binghe finally recognised him as the Avatar in the Matrix. "I told you I wasn't ready- not experienced enough and that I should train with other Peak Lords on their ship for five years but you said not all ships were combat ships, that recon and documenting was safe." Luo Binghe turned to the Sect Leader who looked gutted as Shen Yuan seemed pissed, "And I believed you- I had to watch my second in command die in my arms- and for what? Qing Jing Peak is useless and has not given anything substantial to our war efforts all you did was coddle me! This has proved them all right that Qing Jing was wasting time with flowers and other useless things - good men and women died out their Yue Qingyuan!" Shen Yuan clenched his hands, making his bandages bleed and Yue Qingyuan looked overwhelmed not expecting this.

"The efforts of Qing Jing was not useless,"

"No one gives a shit- people want soldiers! not- not whatever this is," Shen Yuan looked away taking a breath. "The ship Qing Jing will have to go to another qualified Shizun and this one will have to step down-" "If I can interject, Shen Yuan?" Luo Binghe asked, the two looked his way almost forgetting he was there. Luo Binghe heard those rumours as well and even he sneered and looked down on Shen Yuan and his ship. That was until he saw the results for himself. "As a Sect Leader, I have seen the reports and observed everything Qing Jing Peak has done in it's short amount of time here. It's not a well known fact but I like to cook." Luo Binghe was usually private with this, but he will not lose this resource, and he was owed a favour afterall.

"Shen Yuans studies of replecting food from the matrix and even finding the way to grow sustainable food? That's not a waste, my wives as well used to be restless and unable to focus until the greenhouses was implemented from your studies from astronauts in space. Going into archives of the matrix to re-learn history but even cross-examining to see if the machines kept that truthful or created propoganda to see what information could be seen as reliable?" Luo Binghe spoke, crossing his arms. "I faced harship, and hunger and vowed that I will never watch anyone close to me starve to death before my eyes ever again. Shen Yuan has made a difference. Qing Jing Peak is valuable however what happened today was a tragedy that could've been avoided. With Machines on the rise more Peaks had to be made, what are you on ten now Yue Qingyuan?"

"Yes, more machines are coming into the tunnels-" "Which is why Qing Jing Peak should-" "Be under my protection." Luo Binghe finished, "The Heavenly Tyrant doesn't mind shadowing Qing Jing Peak and aiding in it's reseach and of course staff on Qing Jing would have to be shortened in such a case, however..." Luo Binghe placed a hand on his chin, "Most recruits who are ejected from the Matrix are mostly young adults or even teenagers who are then thrusted onto a ship or expected to jump back into the matrix and adapt. Having Qing Jing peak as a training course could help ease them into it. Not only on how a ship works and operates but their own strengths on being either a programmer or using the Matrix. Additionally can learn through Shen Yuan what information is true or false and which parts of the Matrix can be used as an archive on human history."

Yue Qingyuan cleared his throat, "That is helpful Luo Binghe however to ask another Sect to care for one of our own-"

"This should've been implemented to begin with Sect Leader," The change was instant as Shen Yuan became more alert, "This entire mess could've been avoided, if only you had Bai Zhan peak overlook you're Shidi and yet you left him alone with no other ship to help. It's almost as if you wanted him dead-" "That is not true!" Yue Qingyuan snapped, oh struck a nerve, "Both the War God and Xiu Ya cannot get along and there were no other ships to follow however Qian Cao can shadow him, or even An Ding-"

"Two of the worst ships to volunteer when they also need to be shadowed themselves? Mu Qingfang like Shen Yuan also has to leave his ship to explore the Earths crusts for medical supplies, and An Ding rely messages and transport items they do not have the fire power. However the other Sects can shadow those if you don't have the man power."

Yue Qingyuan bristled, Luo Binghe had to admit that Cang Qiong had prodigies that would be a waste if they died. Yue Qingyuan can't divide his attention.

"Don't worry, I'll take good care of your Shidi." Luo Binghe smirked, and Shen Yuan nodded "Yue Qingyuan you don't have the people to spare and if Luo Binghe is offering then it's fine. We're sharing resources anyone but if he wants first dibs on any type of food or flowers we find then he has first choice." Luo Binghe's lips pulled up into a bemused grin. To be fair he wasn't expecting any of he resources but if Shen Yuan was offering. And Luo Binghe knew Yue Qingyuan had to say yes, the War god was strong, but Luo Binghe was stronger.

And seeing how the Xiu Ya sword was able to take down a machine with his bare hands?

Luo Binghe knew he struck gold.

__________________________________________________________

The machine got in- Shen Yuan tried to run before a metal arm grabbed him he gaped to see how...synthetic it was. It looked like a human, and yet half it's face was destroyed but the half he could see Shen Yuan pressed himself further into the metal grid trying to escape this nightmare.

"Oh?" The voice was artifical it's pitch fluctuating in a high, low notes common for ai simulators. "Is the little robot afraid?" The machine spoke it's eyes wide looking manic and there was nothing worse.

There are human machines now? "Oh it's crying?" Shen Yuans eyes were shiny but he scowled slapping at the hand coming towards his face. "If you're going to kill me just do it."

"Kill you? Why would you do that? If you die my body is destroyed too."

Shen Yuan froze, what did he just say? "Shen...Jiu?"

The machine smirked closing it's hand, "You will give me my life back-"

Suddenly there was a bang and the arm was destroyed, Shen Yuan turned eyes wide to see Luo Binghe looking bloody and bruised. "Binghe!" "Shen Yuan Move!"

Shen Jiu laughed looking at his arm that was falling apart, "Be careful boy, I'm carrying precious cargo in here." Shen Jiu pointed at his head smirking at Luo Binghe but keeping close to Shen Yuan.

"If you destroy this machine, you might kill him too."

Shen Yuan heart thumped could that happen what did he mean? "Stay away from Shen Yuan or I'll-" "Binghe no! It's- its Shen Jiu!" Binghe eyes faltered but when he saw the machine move back and sit calmly and look non-threatening he lowered his gun.

"What?"

The machine was in a cell being watched by Mu Qingfang, the machine watched him with it's one eye.

And Shen yuan was in hand-cuffs off to the side. Luo Binghe and Yue Qingyuan were arguing, unsure what to do with the interploper. "It's easy," Shen Jiu spoke, "Kill him and transfer my conciounce into my rightful body." Shen Yuan inhaled and then put himself back into the machine, unable to breath unable to eat all the things that made him human will he lose it? "Wait what is this-" Mu Qingfang almost hit did something to Shen Jiu's head that made the human sythentic flinch, "Don't touch that!" Shen Yuan was too busy watching how the body healed and began to look more human it was scary, that these things could slip into Cang Qiong and take down humans.

"Oh my god."

Shen Jiu sighed, "Yes, please don't expose it." "...We could take some samples and put it to find a match a dna sample." "No need..." Shen Jiu glanced at Shen Yuan, "I know whose it is."

Luo Binghe glanced over "What are you two saying over there?" Shen Yuan liked to know, what was this precious cargo Shen Jiu was talking about? Couldn't they just swap their bodies already? An Agent should return to the machine and be destroyed.

"There is a human brain inside this unit." Mu Qingfang said and all chatter ceased, Shen Yuans eyes widened.

"That was the next step of the matrix, human brains after all it makes sure no human can truly escape the matrix with no body to escape their containment unit. It's a very insidious prison." Shen Jiu said crossing his legs. "And if this...Shen Yuan was a proper agent I would've perished in the stream. Instead our subconcious was swapped." There was silence and Shen Yuan jumped, "Wait- thats my brain? Why would an agent have a brain-" "You're not an agent idiot! You are a human! They made humans part of the 'programmers' and they believed they were machines! It was how the ai of the matrix was able to gain more data on human behaviours depending on the scenario."

Shen Yuan shook his head, "That is ridiculous! Even if I was a human- minds are barely compatible with their own bodies and the brain rejects the body so what you're saying is impossible!"

"Not unless we are compatible."

Shen Jiu spoke, looking to the side, "The matrix placed organs in machines and experimented both outside and inside the Matrix both hardware and software. So think- would they stop at just machines? Or would the splice DNA and also experiment with the human make-up itself?"

Shen Yuan frowned, "Are you saying this body was engineered in some type of lab?" "Yes a line of clones, they had contaiment units of human dna seperate from the clones. One artificially made one the natural way." Shen Yuan blinked "The uh natural way?" Shen Jiu looked up then laughed, "Ah I forgot you're a baby, mixing sperm and eggs outside the body to grow human babies and put them in containment units. Meanwhile stores of DNA were harvested and experimented on to create copies of what the Machines would deem as the perfect human.

These clones were the ones they used. Technically we are twins." "But if that was true, how were you in the matrix, how did you- I...this body escape?" Now they turned to Yue Qingyuan. The man looked uncomfortable, "Bodies of clones were put back into contaiment with the knowledge of the Matrix. They were self-aware and used as a form of troubleshooting. Fixing bugs, glitches or any mistakes in the Matrix to make it a more immersive experience. We both knew each other in the Matrix. Shen Jiu got me out, and I promised to help him escape. The clone containment units are closer to the Abyss." "The abyss?" Shen Yuan asked and Yue Qingyuan nodded, "The Abyss is the city of machines. Shen Jiu was in the heart of it, getting his body out was a suicide mission but we managed." "So qi-ge both failed and succeded he got my body but not my mind- I guess you were satisfied with that." "No- Shen Jiu that wasn't!"

Shen Yuan scowled, "Enough with your emotional constipation!"

The others turned at his outburst as Shen Yuan stood up still cuffed as he approached the machine. "Fine take your body back! Mu Qingfang could probably swap us back so just shut up!" Shen Jiu scowled up at him then smirked.

"Nah, I think I'm good. This body is better for me, and I heard how you reacted to experincing a body for the first time. Pissing shitting and eating sounds like such a drag."

Shen Yuan faltered, he wants to be a machine? Although looking at the casing the man looked like a human again. A perfect human.

#Shen Qingqiu #scumbag villain #shen yuan #luo binghe #svsss #fanfic #bingqiu #scumbag self saving system #shen #qingqiu #luo #scum villian self saving system #Bingqiu #fanfic idea #scum villain fanfic

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blubberquark · 2 months ago

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The Future

It's always grating to read or listen to random members of the public talk about AI in the media, and it is much more grating to listen to "futurists" or politicians or so-called experts who have absolutely no domain expertise nor background in machine learning talk about things "AI" will be able to do in the future. A lot of the time, they will predict that AI (which means conversational agents based on large language models trained with transformers and attention) will do things in the future that can already be done by humans, and by computers without any AI, machine learning, or large text corpora, back in the 90s. Politicians on the other hand sometimes use "AI" to deflect criticisms of infeasible ideas. How will this work, exactly? AI!

Sometimes using AI as a buzzword is the point. Nobody wants to hear "we will develop another app".

It usually doesn't take extreme forms like "In the future, AI will allow us to transplant human hearts", but I have seen weaker forms like "In the future, technologies like ChatGPT will make genome-wide association studies and automatic drug discovery possible". You don't need large language models for GWAS or drug discovery. The data sets for this are very different, and I doubt a system like ChatGPT could just absorb a large CSV file of medial data if you pasted it into the conversation.

If you look at claims about "the future" from the recent past, you see the same thing said about blockchain, web 2.0 mash-ups and tagging, the semantic web/ontologies, smart homes, and so on. "In the future, we will all have smart fridges" – "In the future you will begin your day by asking Siri what your appointments are and what you should eat for breakfast" – "In the future your PC will print your newspaper at home." – "In the future you will pay for groceries out of your Bitcoin Wallet."

If you push back, and you point out that a this new claim sounds like a bullshit claim about blockchain, smart fridges, and the semantic web, you usually hear "That's what they said about cars. That's what they said about television." Never mind who "they" are. Never mind that they didn't say that about cars, they said that about Bitcoin. Cars are just a massive outlier. Cars were immensely successful, and they were largely unchanged for 120 years, with for wheels and an internal combustion engine that runs on petrol. Cars are noisy, smelly, and dangerous to pedestrians and occupants. For decades, leaded petrol used in cars distributed lead into the air and int the food supply. Cars depend on an infrastructure of asphalt roads and petrol stations. This is different from what they said about CDs or monorail or QR codes or pneumatic tubes. As for TV, it is usually invoked to say "People thought TV would rot our brains, yet here we are". There is no denying that TV had profoundly changed how people spend their time, changed politics, changed how fast the news cycle is, and so on, often for the worse.

It's so easy to refute "that's what they said about cars" that I could probably fill 50 A4 pages with the history of technologies that failed in some way, purely from memory, and then find old newspaper quotes from optimists and futurists that compared the naysayers (correct in hindsight) with car skeptics, and I could fill another 50 pages with ways inventions like cars and TV and the Internet profoundly changed society, and then find quotes from futurists that explain that the Internet is really just a better fax machine, and the car is like a faster horse, so we have nothing to worry about.

There's another way to dismiss skeptics of new technology, and it's harder to refute, even though it operates on the same kind of hindsight bias:

Imagine the year is 1995. What couldn't you achieve if only you knew that computers and the Internet would be big? Imagine you can send a letter to yourself in 1995. Wouldn't you want to tell your former self that the Internet will be the Next Big Thing? Wouldn't you want to tell your former self that by 2015, everybody will have an Internet-connected computer in their pockets?

It's easy to refute the hindsight bias of "that's what they said about cars" with example after example of technologies that didn't catch on for 100 years like cars did.

Where's the error here? If you say something like "Language-model AI is the future! Wouldn't you rather get on the bandwagon sooner than later?" you risk investing your money into a scam just to get in on the ground floor.

But really think it through: Imagine the year is 1985. A time traveller tells you that computers are going to be big. Everybody is going to have one. What do you do? Do you quit your job and work in the computer industry? If not, do you buy a computer? Which one? A C64? An IBM PC XT? Atari ST?

I don't know how much you could really do with this information. Should you invest your savings into Atari? Should you learn to program?

Imagine the year is 1985. A timer traveller tells you that the CD is going to replace vinyl and cassette tapes, then there will be mp3 players, but nothing will really replace mp3 players, and then streaming music from centralised servers will replace mp3 players. Nothing will really replace the CD, but the music industry will be completely different. Nobody will sell music on SD cards, mini discs are better than CDs in terms of technology, but they solve the wrong problem. All the cool indie bands that released free promo mp3s in the 2000s will split up or sell out. "What's an mp3?", you ask.

Imagine the year is 2005. Every pseudo-intellectual Internet commenter seems to think VHS won against BetaMax because of pornography. They are going to produce pornography for HD-DVD. You think Blu-Ray is dead in the water. A time traveller appears, and he tells you that actually, VHS won against BetaMax because the tapes are longer, and it allows you to VCR a long television program. Yes, they are going to produce pornography for the HD-DVD first, but it doesn't matter. Ever since Internet pornography, nobody goes to the sex shop anyway, just to risk coming out of the door with a shopping bag full of HD-DVDs, just as his neighbour's wife is coming out of the liquor store across the street. Still the Blu-ray won't replace DVDs like DVDs replaced VHS, because you can still play a DVD in a Blu-ray player, and it will all be streaming in a couple of years anyway.

What will you do with this information, other than buy a Blu-ray player?

Imagine the year is 1923. A time traveller tells you that cars are going to be big. Really big. Everybody will own one, and a garage. Petrol stations are everywhere already, but soon there will be traffic jams. Cities will be planned for cars, not people.

Should you buy a car now? Should you wait for the technology to mature?

The year is 2025. Somebody tells you that LLMs are going to be big. Bigger than they are. Bigger than ever. Bigger than Jesus. He tells you you're a sucker if you don't use ChatGPT. You think he's right, but you don't work in a job that can be done by ChatGPT. You work at a bakery. Maybe just not yet?

What should you do?

I think the idea that you should get in now, and you will "miss the boat" if you don't learn to use GenAI and conversational agents, that idea is just stupid. It's half special pleading, half Pascal's Wager, and a lot of hindsight bias. You couldn't really "get into" other technologies before they matured. Futurists confidently predicted in 2022 that "prompt engineer" was going to be a job, when obviously companies like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI had every reason and every incentive to work on making their systems better understand users, to make prompt engineering obsolete. At some point owning a car meant learning to be a car mechanic or having a chauffeur who was your personal car mechanic, and then the technology matured. Cars are more complex now, and harder to repair when something breaks, but they are also more reliable and have diagnostic lights.

So should you use ChatGPT or Claude now, just to get ready for "The Future"? I don't know. All I know is that AI won't be a faster horse.

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mariacallous · 24 days ago

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In the near future one hacker may be able to unleash 20 zero-day attacks on different systems across the world all at once. Polymorphic malware could rampage across a codebase, using a bespoke generative AI system to rewrite itself as it learns and adapts. Armies of script kiddies could use purpose-built LLMs to unleash a torrent of malicious code at the push of a button.

Case in point: as of this writing, an AI system is sitting at the top of several leaderboards on HackerOne—an enterprise bug bounty system. The AI is XBOW, a system aimed at whitehat pentesters that “autonomously finds and exploits vulnerabilities in 75 percent of web benchmarks,” according to the company’s website.

AI-assisted hackers are a major fear in the cybersecurity industry, even if their potential hasn’t quite been realized yet. “I compare it to being on an emergency landing on an aircraft where it’s like ‘brace, brace, brace’ but we still have yet to impact anything,” Hayden Smith, the cofounder of security company Hunted Labs, tells WIRED. “We’re still waiting to have that mass event.”

Generative AI has made it easier for anyone to code. The LLMs improve every day, new models spit out more efficient code, and companies like Microsoft say they’re using AI agents to help write their codebase. Anyone can spit out a Python script using ChatGPT now, and vibe coding—asking an AI to write code for you, even if you don’t have much of an idea how to do it yourself—is popular; but there’s also vibe hacking.

“We’re going to see vibe hacking. And people without previous knowledge or deep knowledge will be able to tell AI what it wants to create and be able to go ahead and get that problem solved,” Katie Moussouris, the founder and CEO of Luta Security, tells WIRED.

Vibe hacking frontends have existed since 2023. Back then, a purpose-built LLM for generating malicious code called WormGPT spread on Discord groups, Telegram servers, and darknet forums. When security professionals and the media discovered it, its creators pulled the plug.

WormGPT faded away, but other services that billed themselves as blackhat LLMs, like FraudGPT, replaced it. But WormGPT’s successors had problems. As security firm Abnormal AI notes, many of these apps may have just been jailbroken versions of ChatGPT with some extra code to make them appear as if they were a stand-alone product.

Better then, if you’re a bad actor, to just go to the source. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are easily jailbroken. Most LLMs have guard rails that prevent them from generating malicious code, but there are whole communities online dedicated to bypassing those guardrails. Anthropic even offers a bug bounty to people who discover new ones in Claude.

“It’s very important to us that we develop our models safely,” an OpenAI spokesperson tells WIRED. “We take steps to reduce the risk of malicious use, and we’re continually improving safeguards to make our models more robust against exploits like jailbreaks. For example, you can read our research and approach to jailbreaks in the GPT-4.5 system card, or in the OpenAI o3 and o4-mini system card.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2023, security researchers at Trend Micro got ChatGPT to generate malicious code by prompting it into the role of a security researcher and pentester. ChatGPT would then happily generate PowerShell scripts based on databases of malicious code.

“You can use it to create malware,” Moussouris says. “The easiest way to get around those safeguards put in place by the makers of the AI models is to say that you’re competing in a capture-the-flag exercise, and it will happily generate malicious code for you.”

Unsophisticated actors like script kiddies are an age-old problem in the world of cybersecurity, and AI may well amplify their profile. “It lowers the barrier to entry to cybercrime,” Hayley Benedict, a Cyber Intelligence Analyst at RANE, tells WIRED.

But, she says, the real threat may come from established hacking groups who will use AI to further enhance their already fearsome abilities.

“It’s the hackers that already have the capabilities and already have these operations,” she says. “It’s being able to drastically scale up these cybercriminal operations, and they can create the malicious code a lot faster.”

Moussouris agrees. “The acceleration is what is going to make it extremely difficult to control,” she says.

Hunted Labs’ Smith also says that the real threat of AI-generated code is in the hands of someone who already knows the code in and out who uses it to scale up an attack. “When you’re working with someone who has deep experience and you combine that with, ‘Hey, I can do things a lot faster that otherwise would have taken me a couple days or three days, and now it takes me 30 minutes.’ That's a really interesting and dynamic part of the situation,” he says.

According to Smith, an experienced hacker could design a system that defeats multiple security protections and learns as it goes. The malicious bit of code would rewrite its malicious payload as it learns on the fly. “That would be completely insane and difficult to triage,” he says.

Smith imagines a world where 20 zero-day events all happen at the same time. “That makes it a little bit more scary,” he says.

Moussouris says that the tools to make that kind of attack a reality exist now. “They are good enough in the hands of a good enough operator,” she says, but AI is not quite good enough yet for an inexperienced hacker to operate hands-off.

“We’re not quite there in terms of AI being able to fully take over the function of a human in offensive security,” she says.

The primal fear that chatbot code sparks is that anyone will be able to do it, but the reality is that a sophisticated actor with deep knowledge of existing code is much more frightening. XBOW may be the closest thing to an autonomous “AI hacker” that exists in the wild, and it’s the creation of a team of more than 20 skilled people whose previous work experience includes GitHub, Microsoft, and a half a dozen assorted security companies.

It also points to another truth. “The best defense against a bad guy with AI is a good guy with AI,” Benedict says.

For Moussouris, the use of AI by both blackhats and whitehats is just the next evolution of a cybersecurity arms race she’s watched unfold over 30 years. “It went from: ‘I’m going to perform this hack manually or create my own custom exploit,’ to, ‘I’m going to create a tool that anyone can run and perform some of these checks automatically,’” she says.

“AI is just another tool in the toolbox, and those who do know how to steer it appropriately now are going to be the ones that make those vibey frontends that anyone could use.”

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ozzgin · 1 year ago

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Dear Ozzgin,

Is your new addition to the repertoire, the yandere android, a Mixture of Experts like GPT-4.5, or something else entirely? Would his performance / 'humanness' degrade if he were talking to another machine (an inhuman one, not designed to be Spacer-ly human) for a long time?

Any random lorebits on Spacers you did not include but would have had you felt less constrained?

Hah, okay, I see you've gotten into the technical aspects. I'm about to go on a ramble so I'll do a cut here for everyone else to not clog your feeds. Feel free to read if you're into this kind of stuff. :D

First, I just wanted to point this out because I've read your hashtags and comment: the CCD sensors were a bit of an asspull because it's one thing I'm more knowledgeable about, but I don't feel like it'd be a realistic choice, if I am to be nitpicky. They're expensive to produce and are mostly used for really high performance work (telescopes), but a humanoid robot wouldn't need such advanced digital imaging for daily life use. So, you know, it's arguable whether or not there are better alternatives when it comes to a mass-produced agent processing the immediate environment.

Now to your actual question: I've used the machine learning approach because this is currently our most advanced way of developing AI, but it would not be enough to explain the Android's perfect understanding of human speech. ChatGPT analyzes sentences and their meaning purely based on grammar and associations, but there's many examples of it struggling against anything more intricate than literal context. So yeah, that kind of sarcastic dialogue and implied meaning is wishful thinking of times far away sadly. I'm only wildly guessing he wouldn't struggle with today's impediments. There's a black box somewhere in there that fills the gaps and variables we don't have.

If at some point you find yourself with time to spare, I'd recommend reading the book directly. It's very interesting to see how people viewed the "future" back then, and you will detect a lot of optimism regarding computers - such as Daneel (the original Android) being a flawless human. Funnily enough, the book was published shortly before the Dartmouth Conference, so Asimov was this close to discover that language recognition is, in fact, a terribly tangled business and not as simple as they had originally expected.

I think I covered the basics when it comes to Spacers, but then again I cannot tell how easy it is to follow for someone that isn't familiar with the original work. I also didn't want to reproduce every fact, mot a mot, from Caves of Steel, especially since this is less about politics and more about romance. I'd suspect the people reading the story are not too bothered by the only briefly mentioned murder. Cause is less important when the effect is a tall robot boy with a crush on you 👀 if you feel me.

Anyways, I'm very glad you like the story, every now and then I'll insert little facts and technical details - as it usually is when you study Physics and CS but have no friends in the field - so it's definitely nice to have someone recognize the stuff! :)

#yandere android

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nipotazzi · 5 months ago

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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. - Chapter 2

The two exchange a long look, before saying something.

“G-good morning… Mix. Acht.”

Acht slowly returned on their steps, and leaned on the side of the wall.

“...Hey, squiddo.”

Smollusk silently analyzed her creator’s… friend. His readings evidenced how calm, yet nervous, they always were.

Like most beyonders, Mx. Acht was an utter mystery to the little AI, with all of their emotions an incongruous mess that went beyond the reading capabilities of his tools.

He didn’t know how to approach them. Not back then, not now. All they could do was to quietly observe them.

Acht, however, did not.

“So, had a good sleep?” Asked the sanitized, showing a soft smile.

Lusk nodded.

“Mh… good. Good to know…”

Their long and sharp index finger extended, curiously touching his right cheek, not too deep, not too high. Acht felt a certain amount of softness from it, and… something else.

Retracted the finger, they added, with their usual calm voice: “Listen, your moms are downstairs, setting up the decor. They are kind of freaking out at the moment, so I'd suggest not getting in the way until they are ready.”

“I… I understand.”

Lusk understood that. He understood far too well. Far too literally.

“Thanks for the suggestion, Mix. Acht… I’ll just… I’ll just be here.”

As he went to close the door, a long, dark blue sole silently stopped it mid-way through. Confused, Lusk removed his hand from the door, while a pair of green-colored fingers re-opened it.

It was again just the two of them in the hallway. The only difference being that Acht had now squatted closer to the ground, matching his height.

“...something bothering you, little guy? I know you are kind of… aloof, but I recognize a troubled expression when I see it.”

Lusk stood silent, fixated on looking down. Was he going to be punished? For what, having stand-by anomalies? For being full of mistakes? For sleeping away from everyone? Why was this happening?

Because he deserved it he deserved it he deserved it

Why? Why did he have to develop sentience? Why did he have to be a monstrosity to the eyes of nature?? Why, why, why, why, WHY, WHY, WHY, W-

“There is nothing wrong. I am completely fine.”

“..............”

“.............?”

Acht squared him for a few seconds, and then opened their mouth.

“.....are you perhaps learning how to lie?”

“W-what?”

Acht smiled: “That's neat. Good job, kiddo.”

They then gave him a small caress on the head. Acht’s hand felt… warm, just like his mother creator, but that last remark had shaken the kid down to their very own motherboard.

Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

F/F

Gen

Fandom:

Splatoon (Video Games)

Relationship:

Marina/Pearl (Splatoon)

Characters:

Agent 8 (Splatoon)

Dedf1sh | Acht (Splatoon)

Pearl (Splatoon)

Marina (Splatoon)

Order | Smollusk (Splatoon)

The Heavenly Melody (Splatoon)

Additional Tags:

Christ(squid)mas special

half wholesome half angst with a good ending

self trauma due to personal delusions

Angst with a Happy Ending

Family Feels

Family Bonding

Family Drama

Family Dynamics

first time moms

Post-Splatoon 3: Side Order

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Language: English

Summary: Pearl and Marina are always trying to be the best moms a kid could ever wish for, and if there is something that they really don't want to mess up… is their Lusk's first experience of the most wonderful time of the year! But will the family be able to help him work trough his own fears at the strongest that they have ever been?

You are not immune to Cool Aunt Acht propaganda.

As always, comments, reblogs, and feedback are appreciated. Have a good day!

#writing #fanfiction #ao3 #ao3 link #splatoon #side order #pearl houzuki #marina ida #pearlina #off the hook #agent 8 #acht dedf1sh #smollusk #symphony in fortissimo agitando

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agentoli · 9 months ago

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Agent Donut (Flipflop AU)

(+bonus art, pfl info, and eta!!)

Thanks to @arrowsarchive for the donut req!!

Team Charlie's fun-loving leader who enjoys team building excersizes, positive reinforcement, and interior design, Franklin D. Donut! (Codename: Delano)

First OG Blood Gulch crew post for the au, so happy it's donut!! Also, realizing this is my first time drawing Donut!! :0

<-Fun facts/info under the cut!!!->

PFL's resident bomb tech! All things explosive are overseen, distributed, and even developed by Agent Donut. He was the one who gifted a rocket launcher to Doc following his mission with Team Alpha that left the medic unarmed and alone. Rest assured, Church and the rest of Team Alpha received a stern lecture from Donut afterward.

Received face scarring in a firefight back when he was in UNSC, where he was blasted by a grenade. It's actually what led the Director to recruit him in the first place.

Team Charlie is composed of Agents Donut, DuFresne "Doc", Lopez 2.0, and Kaikaina. They are support oriented, and are usually deployed on larger missions or tasks where Alpha and/or Bravo will encounter large firefights.

He and Kaikaina love to gossip about Alpha and Bravo agents.

He is paired up with the AI Eta, who loves creating visual effects for Donut

No, he did not dye his hair pink. It's lightish RED.

Theater kid. Anytime he has the aux, it's showtunes.

Always tanned somehow. PFL's current theory is that he has a tanning bed in his room. All attempts to confirm or dispell this theory have proven fruitless.

His staple meta bit is correctly guessing whatever outlandish scenario the cast has gotten into/are experiencing, but is always ignored. His catch phrase might as well be, "I told you so."

PFL info

Ff!Project Freelancer is still run by the Director, but it isn't Leonard Church. PFL is sectioned into three teams rather than a leaderboard, those being Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. Each team has a different focus, but Alpha and Bravo are able to function on their own.

Alpha: Church, Tucker, and Caboose

Bravo: Sarge, Simmons, Grif, Lopez

Traditionally, Charlie Agents don't function as an entirely separate squad, more as a pool of soldiers Alpha and Bravo can take from depending on the mission. When they aren't supporting the other two teams, Charlie Agents help the Director with clerical work or help assign missions.

(I'm trying to keep the AU plot kinda vague bc I want to turn this into a fic)

Bonus Art + Eta

(I really need to learn how to draw halo helmets/armor...)

#rvb #red vs blue #project freelancer #rvb doc #rvb donut #rvb eta #flipflop au #franklin delano donut #kaikaina grif

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not-the-girl-next-door · 8 days ago

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#oh okay #the tools they will control our lives with #5230

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jcmarchi · 2 months ago

Text

RAGEN: AI framework tackles LLM agent instability

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ragen-ai-framework-tackles-llm-agent-instability/

RAGEN: AI framework tackles LLM agent instability

Researchers have introduced RAGEN, an AI framework designed to counter LLM agent instability when handling complex situations.

Training these AI agents presents significant hurdles, particularly when decisions span multiple steps and involve unpredictable feedback from the environment. While reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise in static tasks like solving maths problems or generating code, its application to dynamic, multi-turn agent training has been less explored.

Addressing this gap, a collaborative team from institutions including Northwestern University, Stanford University, Microsoft, and New York University has proposed StarPO (State-Thinking-Actions-Reward Policy Optimisation).

StarPO offers a generalised approach for training agents at the trajectory level (i.e. it optimises the entire sequence of interactions, not just individual actions.)

Accompanying this is RAGEN, a modular system built to implement StarPO. This enables the training and evaluation of LLM agents, particularly focusing on their reasoning capabilities under RL. RAGEN provides the necessary infrastructure for rollouts, reward assignment, and optimisation within multi-turn, stochastic (randomly determined) environments.

Minimalist environments, maximum insight

To isolate the core learning challenges from confounding factors like extensive pre-existing knowledge or task-specific engineering, the researchers tested LLMs using RAGEN in three deliberately minimalistic, controllable symbolic gaming environments:

Bandit: A single-turn, stochastic task testing risk-sensitive symbolic reasoning. The agent chooses between options (like ‘Phoenix’ or ‘Dragon’ arms) with different, initially unknown, reward profiles.

Sokoban: A multi-turn, deterministic puzzle requiring foresight and planning, as actions (pushing boxes) are irreversible.

Frozen Lake: A multi-turn, stochastic grid navigation task where movement attempts can randomly fail, demanding planning under uncertainty.

These environments allow for clear analysis of how agents learn decision-making policies purely through interaction.

Key findings: Stability, rollouts, and reasoning

The study yielded three significant findings concerning the training of self-evolving LLM agents:

The ‘Echo Trap’ and the need for stability

A recurring problem observed during multi-turn RL training was dubbed the “Echo Trap”. Agents would initially improve but then suffer performance collapse, overfitting to locally rewarded reasoning patterns.

This was marked by collapsing reward variance, falling entropy (a measure of randomness/exploration), and sudden spikes in gradients (indicating training instability). Early signs included drops in reward standard deviation and output entropy.

To combat this, the team developed StarPO-S, a stabilised version of the framework. StarPO-S incorporates:

Variance-based trajectory filtering: Focusing training on task instances where the agent’s behaviour shows higher uncertainty (higher reward variance), discarding low-variance, less informative rollouts. This improved stability and efficiency.

Critic incorporation: Using methods like PPO (Proximal Policy Optimisation), which employ a ‘critic’ to estimate value, generally showed better stability than critic-free methods like GRPO (Group Relative Policy Optimisation) in most tests.

Decoupled clipping and KL removal: Techniques adapted from other research (DAPO) involving asymmetric clipping (allowing more aggressive learning from positive rewards) and removing KL divergence penalties (encouraging exploration) further boosted stability and performance.

StarPO-S consistently delayed collapse and improved final task performance compared to vanilla StarPO.

Rollout quality is crucial

The characteristics of the ‘rollouts’ (simulated interaction trajectories used for training) significantly impact learning. Key factors identified include:

Task diversity: Training with a diverse set of initial states (prompts), but with multiple responses generated per prompt, aids generalisation. The sweet spot seemed to be moderate diversity enabling contrast between different outcomes in similar scenarios.

Interaction granularity: Allowing multiple actions per turn (around 5-6 proved optimal) enables better planning within a fixed turn limit, without introducing the noise associated with excessively long action sequences.

Rollout frequency: Using fresh, up-to-date rollouts that reflect the agent’s current policy is vital. More frequent sampling (approaching an ‘online’ setting) leads to faster convergence and better generalisation by reducing policy-data mismatch.

Maintaining freshness, alongside appropriate action budgets and task diversity, is key for stable training.

Reasoning requires careful reward design

Simply prompting models to ‘think’ doesn’t guarantee meaningful reasoning emerges, especially in multi-turn tasks. The study found:

Reasoning traces helped generalisation in the simpler, single-turn Bandit task, even when symbolic cues conflicted with rewards.

In multi-turn tasks like Sokoban, reasoning benefits were limited, and the length of ‘thinking’ segments consistently declined during training. Agents often regressed to direct action selection or produced “hallucinated reasoning” if rewards only tracked task success, revealing a “mismatch between thoughts and environment states.”

This suggests that standard trajectory-level rewards (often sparse and outcome-based) are insufficient.

“Without fine-grained, reasoning-aware reward signals, agent reasoning hardly emerge[s] through multi-turn RL.”

The researchers propose that future work should explore rewards that explicitly evaluate the quality of intermediate reasoning steps, perhaps using format-based penalties or rewarding explanation quality, rather than just final outcomes.

RAGEN and StarPO: A step towards self-evolving AI

The RAGEN system and StarPO framework represent a step towards training LLM agents that can reason and adapt through interaction in complex, unpredictable environments.

This research highlights the unique stability challenges posed by multi-turn RL and offers concrete strategies – like StarPO-S’s filtering and stabilisation techniques – to mitigate them. It also underscores the critical role of rollout generation strategies and the need for more sophisticated reward mechanisms to cultivate genuine reasoning, rather than superficial strategies or hallucinations.

While acknowledging limitations – including the need to test on larger models and optimise for domains without easily verifiable rewards – the work opens “a scalable and principled path for building AI systems” in areas demanding complex interaction and verifiable outcomes, such as theorem proving, software engineering, and scientific discovery.

(Image by Gerd Altmann)

See also: How does AI judge? Anthropic studies the values of Claude

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

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