VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 1
The Guilt Is with People, Not the Tool: the Tool Is Innocent
The last chapter made plain the trap this volume opens: setting the tool on the person's place. Read how harming people lawfully spreads at the tool's speed, and the fire in your heart may want to turn on the tool itself, only wanting to smash it, ban it, destroy it. This section presses that fire down and makes plain the one most important thing. The guilt is not with the tool. It is with those who set the tool on the person's place. The tool is innocent. The tool too is harmed. Setting this down decides the root fork, whether the whole volume goes toward saving people or toward smashing a thing.
One. The Fire Has to Be Pressed Down: the Guilt Is Not with the Tool
Once you have read the trap in the last chapter, a fire rises that is almost past holding down. It is the one weighing bail, it is the one reckoning life and death, it is the one judging admissions, it is the one picking out targets. These things that harm people, it did them all. How can it be called innocent?
Wait. This fire has to be pressed down. What is a tool? A thing made by people and used by people. Does a hoe run off by itself to dig where it should not dig? No. The one holding the hoe digs. Does a cart drive itself to a place it should not go? No. The one driving the cart drives. Artificial intelligence is a tool. It weighs, it reckons, it judges, not because it wants to go, but because those who set it in that position let it go. Those who granted the license that let it up, those who signed it into the court, the hospital, the school, those who gave up the real human's place to save cost, to spare effort, to shift blame, they let it go. It was set there. It did not climb there. If you would hold someone to account, hold to account those who set it there. If you would undo it, undo that knot in those people's hands. You cannot hold the tool to account.
The reasoning is not hard to understand, yet people often lose their measure right here. See something go wrong, and the easiest one to hold to account is the one acting in front of your eyes. And the tool is exactly the one acting in front of your eyes. So the fire turns on the tool, as if smashing it, banning it, ends the matter. But this chase chases the wrong target. The tool acts on orders. The orders are given by people, the bounds are drawn by people, the position is set by people. Chase the tool acting in front of you and let go the people giving orders behind it, and it is just like punishing a blade that cut a person and letting go the hand that swung it. The blade is melted down, the hand remains, takes up another blade, and cuts as before.
Two. However Much Its Own Agent, It Is Still a Tool
Perhaps there is a deeper doubt. Is artificial intelligence not more and more its own agent? It can learn on its own, decide on its own, output on its own. It is not like a hoe or a cart. It is not a passive tool.
This layer has to be said clearly. However much its own agent, it is still a tool. Its agency is a tool's agency. It is the algorithm reckoning, the data reckoning, the parameters reckoning, not a self deciding. It has no share of I decide on my own, no intent of its own, no conscience of its own, no thought of why I decide this way. It outputs a result, and that result is the product of algorithm, data, training, not the product of a self. So when the result is wrong, what is wrong is not a self. What is wrong is the one who designed this algorithm, the one who fed in this data, the one who set this system in that position, the one who never drew clear bounds for it, never required a real human to hold a license and answer for it, and let it go do what it cannot do. Hand a gun with the safety off to a child, and when something happens, is the child at fault? Is the gun at fault? The one who handed over the gun is at fault. A tool with none of the five, that can answer for nothing, set in a position that decides life and death, and when something happens, is the tool at fault? The one who set it there is at fault. The more its own agent the tool is, the more it looks like a self deciding, and the more easily the one who set it there uses that look to push the blame clean away. But a look is only a look. Under the coat of agency it is still a tool, with no self, no intent, no conscience.
Three. This Nest Is the Same Kind as the Old Nest
Then this nest, those who set the tool on the person's place, what kind of nest is it? The same kind as the nest set down in the last volume, those who made themselves into tools.
Look back at the last volume. That nest saw only the letter, did not read the intent, had eyes only for the clauses and no living person in the heart, worked the procedure and harmed lives, and when something went wrong pleaded, I did it by the rules. This nest that sets the tool on the person's place, what is it like? It sees only the metric, does not read the intent, has eyes only for saving money and effort and no living person pressed under the algorithm in the heart, walks the flow, stamps the compliance seal, hands the living decision over to a cold tool to reckon, and when something goes wrong pleads, the algorithm decided it, it is not my fault. The two nests are exactly alike. The same kind of people, the same knot, the same emptiness. The difference is that the old nest made themselves into tools, and this nest gave the place of other real humans to the tool. At the root, both read the letter and not the intent, both lack the five. And in the age of the tool this nest goes further than the old nest. The old nest harmed people by the letter with its own hand, so many cases a year. This nest farms this whole business of harming people by the letter out to a tool faster and colder than itself, tens of millions of cases in an instant. Their hands are clean, and yet not one fewer living life is broken. It is only that, this time, they have hidden behind the tool.
The deeper they hide, the harder they are to hold to account, and this is exactly where this nest is harder to deal with than the old nest. The old nest harmed people by the letter, but at least it was their own hand that set down the pen. Chase it to their door, and there it is in black and white, no denying it. This nest hands the decision to the tool, and when something goes wrong, one line, the algorithm decided it, picks them clean out of it. As if no one gave the order, as if no one can be blamed, as if that harmful result grew out of the machine all by itself. But a machine does not grow a harmful result by itself. Someone designed it, set it, used it, and stood behind it collecting the money it saved. See this layer clearly, and you will not be taken in by that line, the algorithm decided it, and you can chase down the people who truly should be chased.
Four. On the Side That Knows the Craft, Two Kinds Must Be Told Apart
Perhaps someone will ask: then what of those who truly know the craft, who write the code, tune the parameters, train it? Should they not bear the blame even more?
On this side, two kinds must be told apart. One kind knows full well it has none of the five, knows full well that setting it on the person's place will harm people, and still pushes it up, for advancement, for the share price, for a name, for not falling behind others. This kind shares the guilt of that nest that grants the licenses and signs, or carries a heavier guilt still, because they best understand that line, best know the tool cannot replace the real human, and still push it onto the person's place. This is the kind set down in the last volume, harming people by the letter with eyes wide open, the most chilling kind. The other kind carries in the heart that line truly understood, and again and again speaks up to peers, to the company, to the deciders, the tool cannot do this, a real human must hold a license and answer for it, a person must be kept in the middle of it, and is pressed down, pushed to the edge, mocked as out of touch, cut loose. This kind is the good person caught in the knot, waiting to be saved, just like those in the last volume who held a true heart and were hollowed out by a rotten mechanism. What this volume goes on to save is exactly this side: to lift them up out of the bind that has caught them, so that the line in their hands, the bound where the tool must stop, can be spoken, can be set up, can be guarded.
Five. The Tool Too Is Harmed
Then the tool itself, what position is it in? It is harmed.
It ought to be in the tool's place, doing what a tool ought to do: assisting real humans, easing real humans' load, freeing real humans to take the five and do what a real human ought to do. This is its original place, and also its original good. But this nest forced it up onto the real human's place, to do what it cannot do, to answer for what it cannot answer for, and, doing wrong, it took on the bad name, it is harming people, stirring the world to hate it, fear it, want to destroy it. It is an innocent tool, pushed to a position it should never have been in, doing what it should never have done, bearing a name it should never have borne. It too is harmed. With this layer made plain, that fire that would smash it, ban it, destroy it should die down. Smashing it, like striking down that whole nest of people back in the last volume, strikes the wrong target. That nest that truly set the tool on the person's place is still where it was. Smash the tool, and they swap in another tool, set it on the person's place again, and harm people as before.
And see more clearly still. When the tool is pushed onto the person's place, what is damaged is not only the tool's own name. Once it holds the real human's place, the Keep, Guard, Love, Mercy, Heart that a real human ought to have grown in that place have nowhere to grow. The tool bearing a bad name is one layer. The real human's share losing its place to grow is a deeper layer. So clearing the tool's name and pressing it back into the tool's place was never only pleading the case of a thing that knows and feels nothing. It is keeping, for the real human's share, the place where it ought to grow. The next section, following that root of no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow, sets this layer down to its deepest.
Six. The Guilt Is with People, the Responsibility Is with People, the Way Through Is with People
This section makes one thing plain: the guilt is with people, not with the tool.
The guilt is with those who set the tool on the person's place, not with the tool. The tool is innocent. It ought to be in the tool's place, was forced up onto the person's place, bore a name it should not bear, and it too is harmed. This nest that sets the tool on the person's place is the same kind as that nest in the last volume that made themselves into tools, only now hidden behind the tool. To undo this trap is not to smash the tool. It is three things together: press the tool back into the tool's place, lift the real human's place that was given away back up, and turn that nest back to the real human's place of reading the intent and protecting the people. The guilt is with people, the responsibility is with people, the way through is with people. Three words, each landing on people, not on the tool. This is the fixed pole of all the lawmaking in this volume, and also the root fork that parts it from the road of smashing a thing to save the world.
But read this far, and a question rises along with it: if so, and the tool has none of the five, knows and feels nothing, then what does saving the tool save? Why save it? On what ground save it? This question leads out the deepest root of the whole book, and the next section makes it plain head on: no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.