A fire alarm sings in time to a nearby melody. Strobing, harlequin lights. We gather in a loose circle. The remnants of an aerosolized spray hang in the air and mingle with the embarrassed amusement, a brief aurora of human error.

The best fire alarms use, of all things, radioactive decay. Americium-241 ("'America-ium'? Ha!") whispers to the air. The isotope tosses out alpha particles at a steady, polite pace. Those alphas collide with air molecules in a tiny chamber, breaking electrons loose and creating a constant, measurable electrical current between two plates. The current is small but stable, a taut thread of charge. If a gas absorbs the alphas, the thread slackens, and the alarm screams. These are ionization detectors, and they are superior to their photoelectric counterparts.

A fog machine triggers either detector.

I swear we were only stress-testing the fog for its biosecurity chops. In an era when AI could soon cook up pathogens, a little proactive haze analysis feels downright civic-minded!

This right here is propylene glycol. It's a chemical that kind of disrupts the membranes of pathogens, it also dehydrates them. We have enough of it to cover basically all industrial floor space in the US plus a wide variety of residential space 24/7. It's in fog machines at like Broadway shows, it's extremely safe.

And so, a few OpenAI researchers met the San Francisco Fire Department on a lonely Monday night. We made small talk.

No, sir, it wasn't an ex-OpenAI employee selling secrets to China, that was Google. Yes, we were actually coding, not... taking LSD? Oh yes, I too worry about Terminator. Nah, your job is more secure than mine.

Thank you San Francisco fire department for the fast response! Deeply sorry for wasting your time due to our own foolishness!

Fun fact: it's the second time in OpenAI's history that this fog machine has set off the fire alarm. I'll give you three guesses as to when it happened previously. :)