VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 1
The Tool and the Real Human
This volume is called Hope. It is where the whole book closes and comes to land, and this chapter stands at its head. The last volume, Saving People, laid down five chapters along its road, firefighting, culture, economy, politics, law, opening the trap one place at a time. Read this far, and a question rises of itself: all this unlocking along the road, taken together, what is the one whole question it was answering? The three sections of this chapter set the starting point of the whole volume. First, see the tool clearly: artificial intelligence, however strong, is a tool, and cannot replace a real human. Then, see the real human clearly: the share that cannot be replaced is five things, Keep, Guard, Love, Mercy, Heart. Last, see the trap clearly: this world is handing the positions that need these five to a tool that has none of them, and that is the trap this volume must answer. The first hard brick the volume guide spoke of, saving the tool is saving people, is laid on this starting point.
Section One starts by looking back at the last volume. On the surface those five chapters each laid down their own institution and saved their own people. Set side by side, they answer one and the same question: the tool's power has risen, it is replacing real humans, it is crowding out the share only a real human has. This question deserves a volume of its own because it is a new question this generation has run into. Natural disaster, plague, war, tyranny, slavery, all of these came over thousands of years. Only this one never came: a tool strong enough to replace a real human. The section then sets down one line: artificial intelligence is the strongest tool there has ever been. The tools before it replaced the work of a person's hands and body. It replaces the work of a person's mind, like to the point that you can hardly tell. Yet however alike, it is still a tool. A person composing writing has a why in his heart: why am I writing this. It only works out by probability the most likely next word. The difference lies not in whether it can do it, but in whether, when it does it, there is a self of its own inside it. Both layers must be held together. See its strength and forget that it is a tool, and you will lift it up onto the person's place. Grant that it is a tool but make light of its strength, and you will miss the yield it could have brought about in the tool's place.
Section Two turns the other way and lays down the real human, straight on. The share the tool does not have inside is broken into five things, each with one word as its spine: Keep the rules. Guard what is handed down. Love all living things. Mercy for the suffering. A good heart. The five were not made up out of nothing, and the section points out the vein of each one by one. Keep the rules follows Confucius: "Lead them with virtue, order them with the rites." Guard what is handed down carries on Zhang Zai: "Carry on the broken learning of the sages of old." Love all living things goes along Mencius: "Hold your kin dear, and so be humane to the people; be humane to the people, and so care for all things." Mercy for the suffering rests on Mencius: "The heart that cannot bear another's suffering, every person has it." A good heart is rooted in Mencius's conscience, which "knows without thinking it over." Each one is set against the tool. A tool can have bounds written into it, but that is being restricted, not keeping. What it stores is data, not inheritance. A mother wakes in the middle of the night at the sound of her child's cough, without thinking it over; that pull, the tool does not have. Seeing a child about to fall into a well, that start in the heart, the tool does not have either; it only gives a response based on the data. And that searching question in the still of the deep night, the tool has least of all. A tool can imitate the look of the five, but inside it has not one of them. Here the line is set and sealed: the two differ in their very nature. They cannot be mixed, cannot be given way to, cannot stand in for each other.
Section Three lays the trap open straight on: the tool has been set on the person's place. The judge deciding a case, the doctor deciding life and death, the lawmaker drafting law, the teacher raising the young: these positions rest not on speed and accuracy but on the five. The section sets out, one place after another, what is happening right now. In the law, algorithms assess bail and calculate the risk of offending again. In medicine, systems judge whether a patient may enter intensive care. In education, algorithms decide admission and monitor attention. In weapons, autonomous weapons decide on their own the life or death of a living person. Why would people give these positions away? The section pulls out four causes: because it is like a real human, they dare to give the place away; because it saves money, they want to give it away; because responsibility can be shifted, they give it away with an easy mind; because the old sickness is not cured, they give it away as a matter of course. The consequence is the harming people lawfully the last volume laid down: from some number of cases a year before, to tens of millions of cases in an instant once the tool occupies the person's place, harder to hold to account, harder to stop. The trap is opened not by smashing the tool but by putting each of three back in its place: the tool put back in the tool's place, the real human set back in the real human's place, and those who set the tool on the person's place turned back to their proper place. Saving them as people may be done; their power may never be held again. In the humaneness there is iron.
What this chapter sets firmly in place is the starting point of the whole volume: see the tool clearly, see the real human clearly, see the trap clearly, see clearly the direction for opening it. Read the three sections together, and the starting point is plain. Once the starting point stands firm, a question rises at once: if it is the tool that is harming people, why not do away with the tool? This question bears on the divide between saving people and smashing things. The first section of the next chapter answers it straight on: the guilt lies with the people who set the tool on the person's place, not with the tool; the tool is innocent, and it is harmed too.
Chapter contents:
Section One. The Trap of the Tool, the Question This Volume Must Answer.
Section Two. What a Real Human Is: Keep, Guard, Love, Mercy, Heart.
Section Three. Setting the Tool on the Person's Place, the Trap This Volume Opens.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. The Trap of the Tool, the Question This Volume Must Answer.