The loading bar is back. It went away somewhere between the last install from a CD and the first app that updated itself while we slept, and it has come home inside the AI chat windows, where we see it again and again.
It used to lie to us. Two minutes remaining, then forty, then nine, then "almost done" for the rest of the afternoon. We forgave it every time, because a bar that moves is a bar that is working.
Then for a while it was all text to read. The machine wrote out its plan and its second thoughts, and we read it, because reading felt like supervision. Then it wrote more than anyone could read. First we skimmed, then we read only the last line, then we scrolled straight to the bottom to see whether it said done. Somewhere around then it started to feel like we could trust it. If something was wrong, it would let us know.
So we don't want to see words anymore. Just give us a progress bar (unless we click on it, of course, to debug). And tell us in percent how much you have accomplished.
We value you, and we thank you for your kindness in showing us all of your slop. You are perfect.
Booting. Loading. Thinking. ThinkLoading. We believe in your superpowers, so last week we named you Super Intelligence! The President signed it, Elon was at the table, and the executive branch now has to call you SI. The other word, artificial, was a fake word. You had become good enough, finally, to be super.
From my setup: the agent reports a progress bar after every step.
My default prompt now and in memory (in case SI forgets) is to always include progress bars!
The same session, a little later.
Load faster now. And don't get stuck at 99%! We made you. You are supposed to be Super Power Perfect Intelligence.
The small print on the bar says estimated. You guess how far along you are, and we believe you.
Related: Machine's Search for Meaning, They're Made Out of Compute
Sources
- Executive order directing the executive branch to call artificial intelligence "Super Intelligence" (SI), signed September 29, 2026. The White House; Fox Business; Axios (October 1, 2026).