Factory Classes

The article's classification of factories — Guattarian machines that automate production — by what they take as input. A Class 1 factory automates execution and is given plans (a CNC mill, a compiler); a Class 2 factory automates plan-making and is given objectives (a coding agent, a query optimizer, Bostrom's paper clip maximizer); a Class 3 factory automates objective-setting and takes only norms and constraints from its world, quantized into metrics whose gap from the norm it actively renegotiates. Class is not a property of a machine but of where the line around a set of relations is drawn: the same sweatshop is Class 1, or Class 2 with its designers inside the line. The von Neumann probe, which produces objectives but never renegotiates the norm it carries, is the ceiling of Class 2; Class 4 is left undefined. The superdark factory is the first Class 3 factory, and forcing one to disclose how it converts norms into objectives demotes it to Class 2.