VOLUME V, CHAPTER 14
From the Old Order to Artificial Intelligence, the Law's Last Chase
The last chapter turned the taken over, and all three roads remained inside the frame of taking and being taken. Part Six holds only this one chapter, and yet it is the heaviest step the whole volume takes as it lands. This chapter is the last of the whole volume, and it does two things. First it closes out the contemporary international order, seeing that however fine the rules grow, the core remains the freezing of a balance of strength, and from there brings in an entirely new kind of output now redrawing the map, artificial intelligence. Then, following that new output, it lays the whole position of law in the age of artificial intelligence out before your eyes, layer by layer, and crosses the bridge to the next volume. The thirteen chapters before this dug all the way down to the one root, output. This chapter watches how, when output takes on an entirely new shape, the old law and order fall behind, step by step.
The first section closes out the contemporary international order. From Bretton Woods to the trade rules, at the bone they are all the law of a single family legislated by the strong, and yet the position of global output is shifting, and sooner or later the rules will change with it, and from here comes an entirely new kind of output, artificial intelligence, setting the forty-first layer. The Bretton Woods framework was set in 1944, and eighty years on, though the gold peg was lifted as early as 1971, the largest shareholder is still the United States. What the trade rules borrow is no longer a weak nation's own seal, it is the more respectable form of unanimous agreement among all members. In 1945 American industrial output accounted for roughly half the world's total, and around 2010 China's manufacturing output surpassed America's. The rules are like a garment cut to fit a body from years before, and once the body has grown, the old garment pulls tight everywhere.
The second section sets two rules, that law always lagging is its own nature, and that the law made once it catches up mostly welds the vested interest in place, and law for artificial intelligence will hardly escape either, setting the forty-second layer. Counting from that conversational tool at the end of 2022, little more than three years on, hundreds of millions of people worldwide use it every day, and what is being taken this time is the professional territory of mental laborers. Han Fei has a line, "When the age is different, affairs are different, and when affairs are different, preparations must change." Law always follows behind change. In England, from Watt's improved steam engine to an adult male worker gaining the mere right to a ten-hour day, seventy-eight years passed. In America, the rulings handed down on the strength of the Sherman Antitrust Act in its first ten-odd years were, of all things, every one aimed at labor unions. The law never reached out to help on its own initiative. It was squeezed out, bit by bit.
The third section returns to the core. Artificial intelligence is a tool, and the one holding the license is always a person, yet those who train it mostly hold no license, when something goes wrong responsibility cannot be traced, and those it replaces stand in positions growing ever narrower, and at the end a paradox is laid out, laid out and not resolved, setting the forty-third layer. This section calls on the Book of Changes, "What is above form is called the Way. What is below form is called the vessel." However much artificial intelligence resembles a person, its position is the vessel, not the Way. Sun Simiao said, "When someone in distress comes seeking help, do not ask whether he is noble or humble, rich or poor, but treat all equally alike." Any trade that cannot be undone once it goes wrong must carry a license and a chain of responsibility that can be traced. Yet the person training a medical artificial intelligence does not necessarily hold a physician's license. Those replaced now stand in a position no one has stood in for thousands of years, things growing more and more plentiful, while they themselves grow more and more useless. Xunzi said, "Blinded by one corner, and left in the dark about the greater principle." This section lays out the paradox, and does not rush to dissolve it.
Three sections, building from the forty-first layer to the forty-third, lay out the position of law in the age of artificial intelligence in full, and close the whole volume as well. Forty-three layers across the whole volume, and one single thread running from beginning to end, the direction law takes is, in the end, decided by output and by position. This chapter holds, with particular care, the discipline this volume has kept from beginning to end, laying out positions only, offering no way out, bringing every disorder and every predicament before your eyes, and leaving every answer for the next volume, Saving People. The next volume will answer directly how to pull those replaced by artificial intelligence out first and see them settled, and how to grow output large enough that no one need take anymore. The Afterword will also leave one warm thing behind, self-discipline, the line a person sets for himself, what you would not want done to yourself, do not do to others. The more thoroughly the positions have been laid out, the more firmly that way out will stand.
Contents
Section One. The Present International Order, from the Old Rules to a Wholly New Output.
Section Two. The AI Stampede, the Law's Lag and Whom It Is Written For.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. The Present International Order, from the Old Rules to a Wholly New Output.