Future Shock field guide no. 03

Faster paperwork still hits the world.

The Four Floors is a one-page reference for figuring out what kind of limit an AI system runs into after it speeds up the coordination work around a decision.

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Future Shock

Field guide

The Four Floors

Reality, resistance, authority, and trust.

A field test for identifying the floor you will hit.

What the guide helps you identify

One page · Printable

Floor 1

Physical reality

The next step requires contact with the material world. Biology, materials, infrastructure, and other physical systems do not move just because the paperwork got cleaner.

Floor 2

Adversarial reality

Someone else gets a move after your system acts. Fraud, security, markets, negotiations, and strategic competition change in response to the detector.

Floor 3

Institutional authority

Some decisions are valid because a person or institution can be made to answer for them when they are wrong. The output alone is not the authority.

Floor 4

Relational trust

A language model can produce the words. It cannot supply the history that makes someone believe them.

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