I have been developing a didactic analogy that I call "Agentic Park." The logic, I think, tracks formally. Let me walk through it.

Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park is not really about dinosaurs. It is a science fiction horror thriller focused on systems failure, control, and hubris. The dinosaurs are the vector through which Crichton examines systemic breakdown. Their particular nature is increasingly relevant to our moment.

Consider what the dinosaurs actually are. They exist as something alien, simply "other." They are not true dinosaurs but mutants, a facsimile of something real. A second-order simulation. They are non-human and not sentient. But they have tendencies, drives, incentives, a level of intelligence and reasoning, and individuality. The velociraptors in particular have what could be called proto-personalities. While not evil in any true sense, these creatures do act with what appears to be malicious intent.

The story uses these near-human but wholly different creatures to crash through poorly designed systems. The dinosaurs function as a mutant viral strain across every dimension of system design in the park.

Now take them not as dinosaurs but as their constellation of traits. These traits are: lab-created by humans, little understood even by their designers, co-evolving with advanced computer systems, imbued with tendencies, drives, incentives, approximations of intelligence, individuality, and proto-personalities.

When you enumerate this constellation, the analogy becomes clear. Agentic AI maps directly onto every one of these traits.

The dinosaurs are lab-created by humans. So are AI models. The dinosaurs are poorly understood by their creators, exhibiting emergent behaviors that exceed design parameters. AI systems are definitionally black boxes with unexplainable outputs. The dinosaurs co-evolved with the park's computer systems. AI development has tracked computing advancement for decades. The dinosaurs have optimization-like drives. AI systems have reward structures and objective functions. The dinosaurs approximate intelligence without true understanding. LLMs approximate reasoning without comprehension. The dinosaurs display individuality and proto-personality. Different models exhibit distinct behavioral characteristics.

And critically: the dinosaurs seem malicious without being evil. They cause harm without intent or consciousness. This ma...

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