VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 1
The Guilt Is with People, Not the Tool: the Tool Is Innocent
Read the last chapter, and the harm that spreads at the tool's speed lights a fire in you. The fire wants to turn on the tool itself, to smash it, ban it, destroy it. This section presses that fire down and sets one thing straight. The guilt is not the tool's. It belongs to those who set the tool on the person's place. The tool is innocent, and it too is harmed. On this turns whether the volume goes toward saving people or toward smashing a thing.
The fire has to be pressed down. What is a tool? A thing made and used by people. Does a hoe run off to dig where it should not? No. The one holding it digs. Does a cart drive itself where it should not go? No. The one at the wheel drives. The tool weighs bail, reckons life and death, judges admissions, not because it wills to, but because someone set it on that seat and let it. Those who signed the license that let it up, who signed it into court and hospital and school, who gave up the person's place to save cost, to spare effort, to shed blame, they let it. It was set there. It did not climb there. Hold to account the one who set it. Undo the knot in that one's hand. You cannot hold the tool to account. Punish the blade that cut a person and let the hand that swung it go, melt the blade down, and the hand remains, and takes up another blade, and cuts again.
A deeper doubt: is the tool not more and more its own agent now? It learns on its own, decides on its own, outputs on its own, unlike a hoe or a cart. Say it clear: however much its own agent, it is a tool. Its agency is a tool's agency, algorithm reckoning, data reckoning, parameters reckoning, not a self deciding. It has no I decide, no intent of its own, no conscience, no thought of why I decided so. It outputs a result, and that result is the child of algorithm, data, training, not the child of a self. So when the result is wrong, what is wrong is not a self. What is wrong is the one who designed the algorithm, the one who fed the data, the one who set the system on that seat, the one who drew it no clear bound, required no real human to hold a license and answer, and let it do what it cannot do. Hand a loaded gun with the safety off to a child, and when it goes off, is the child at fault? Is the gun? The one who handed it over is at fault. A tool with none of the five, that can answer for nothing, set on a seat that decides life and death, when it goes wrong, is the tool at fault? The one who set it there is. The more its own agent it seems, the easier the one who set it up hides behind that look and wipes his hands. But the look is only a look. Under the coat of agency is still a tool, no self, no intent, no conscience.
What kind of nest is this, these who set the tool on the person's place? The same kind as the nest in the last volume that made themselves into tools. That nest read only the letter, not the intent, saw only the clauses, held no living person in the heart, worked the procedure and harmed lives, and when it went wrong pleaded, I followed the rule. This nest reads only the metric, not the intent, sees only what is saved, holds no living person pressed under the algorithm, walks the flow, stamps the compliance seal, hands the living decision to the cold reckoning of a tool, and when it goes wrong pleads, the algorithm set it, not I. The two nests are the same. One made themselves into tools. This one gave other real humans' seats to a 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 one. The old nest harmed by the letter with its own hand, a few cases a year. This one farms harm-by-the-letter out to a thing faster and colder than itself, a million cases in an instant. Their hands are clean, and the lives are no less broken. They have only hidden, this time, behind the tool.
The deeper they hide, the harder to reach, and here they are harder than the old nest. The old nest harmed by the letter, but at least by their own pen. Chase them and there is the black on white, no denying. This nest hands the decision to a tool, and when it goes wrong, one line, the algorithm set it, wipes them clean. As if no one gave the order, no one can be blamed, as if the harmful result grew out of the machine itself. But a machine does not grow harm on its own. Someone designed it, set it, used it, and behind it collected what was saved. See this layer, and you are not fooled by that line, the algorithm set it, and you can reach the one who should truly be reached.
Then what of those who truly know the craft, who write the code, tune the parameters, train it, do they not bear it more? Here two kinds must be told apart. One kind knows full well the tool has none of the five, knows full well that setting it on the person's place will harm people, and pushes it up anyway, for advancement, for the share price, for the name, for fear of falling behind. This kind shares the guilt of the nest that signs the licenses, and worse, for they best know the line, best know the tool cannot replace the real human, and push it up regardless. This is the last volume's clear-eyed harm-by-the-letter, the coldest kind. The other kind carries the line inside, tells its peers, the company, the deciders again and again, this the tool cannot do, a real human must hold a license and answer, a person must be kept in the loop, and is pressed down, pushed aside, mocked as behind the times, cut loose. This kind is a good person caught in the knot, to be saved, like those in the last volume who held a true heart and were hollowed out by a rotten mechanism. It is this kind the volume goes on to save, to lift them out of the bind, so the line they hold, the tool must stop here, can be spoken, set, and guarded.
Then where does the tool itself stand? It is harmed. It belongs in the tool's place, doing a tool's work, assisting real humans, easing their load, freeing them to spend the five on what a real human should do. That is its place, and its good. Instead this nest forced it up onto the person's place, to do what it cannot, to answer for what it cannot answer, and, doing wrong, it took on the name, it is harming people, and drew the world's hate and fear and wish to destroy it. An innocent tool, forced to a place it should never hold, doing what it should never do, wearing a name it should never wear. It too is harmed. See this, and the fire that would smash it, ban it, destroy it, should die. Smashing it, like the last volume's error of striking down the whole nest, strikes the wrong target. The nest that truly set the tool on the person's place stays where it is. Smash the tool, and they swap in another and set it up again, and harm as before.
See further. When the tool is forced onto the person's place, what is lost is not only the tool's name. Once it holds the person's place, the keep, guard, love, mercy, heart that a real human should have grown there have nowhere to grow. The tool wearing a bad name is one layer. The real human's share losing its ground to grow is the deeper layer. So clearing the tool's name and putting it back in the tool's place is never only pleading for a thing that knows nothing. It is keeping, for the real human's share, the ground it was meant to grow in. This layer the next section carries to its depth, down the root of no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow.
The guilt is with people, the answer 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 every law in this volume, and the root fork that parts it from the road of smashing a thing to save the world. Yet a question rises: 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? The next section answers it straight: no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.