VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 2
The Real Human Is the Skin, the Tool Is the Hair: No Skin, Nowhere for the Hair to Grow
The last section made plain that the guilt is with people, not with the tool, and at the end left the most down-to-earth question: the tool has none of the five, knows and feels nothing, so what does saving it save? Why save it? What this section answers is exactly this question, and it answers not with newly made reasoning, but with a golden line handed down for more than two thousand years: no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow. This is the deepest root of the whole volume. Set down on the matter of the tool and the real human, it makes one thing plain: the real human is the skin, AI is the hair. While the real human is there, the tool has a home. If the real human is gone, the tool goes along with it.
One. A Line Handed Down Two Thousand Years
No skin, nowhere for the hair to grow. These eight characters have been handed down for more than two thousand years. The skin gone, where does the hair cling?
Take the plainest image. Hair grows on an animal's hide. The hair grows out of the hide, is fed by the hide, lives lying close against the hide. If this hide is gone, stripped, rotted, lost, then the hair is gone along with it. It has lost its root, lost its home, lost the body it can cling to, and however thick, however dense, however bright, it falls to the ground, scatters on the wind, and is simply gone. This is no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow. What it speaks of is not the two things, hair and skin. What it speaks of is one of the most fundamental truths of this world: a thing that is attached relies on the body it is attached to; the body gone, the attached thing, however much, however bright, goes along with it. Hair relies on skin, leaf relies on stem, fruit relies on tree, the attached relies on the body. This is one of the deepest, oldest, hardest-to-refute truths of this world. The ancients set down these eight characters to speak of human affairs: if a country falls, all that stood attached to it has nothing to rely on. To borrow it today to speak of the tool and the real human is no forced fit. It is the same truth landing on a new thing. The truth is old, the thing is new. An old truth lighting up a new thing is exactly what this volume has been doing all along the road, and also the constant way the whole book carries on the one line of the sages before.
Two. The Real Human Is the Skin, the Tool Is the Hair
This golden line handed down through the ages, set down on the matter of the tool and the real human, what does it mean? One line says it all: the real human is the skin, the tool is the hair.
The real human is the body, the tool is the attached thing. The real human is the root, the tool is the branches and leaves. The real human is a living, breathing whole, the tool is an object made out of this whole and serving this whole. While the real human is there, the tool has a home. If the real human is gone, the tool goes along with it. Perhaps you doubt it: is it really so? Does the tool not have an existence of its own, independent? Its computing power is its own, its data is its own, it runs on its own machines. Does it really lean on the real human that tightly? Look through it item by item, and you will know how deep this leaning goes.
Three. Four Things Prove the Tool Leans on the Real Human
The first thing: who made the tool? The real human. Every line of code was written by a real human. Every parameter was tuned by a real human. Every piece of training material was prepared by real humans. Every machine, every wire, every chip was made, set up, and powered by real humans. The tool did not fall from the sky. It has no source of its own. Its source, from beginning to end, every character, every current, was made by the hands of real humans. Without real humans to make it, it would not exist at all. It is not like grass and trees that have their own seed, or beasts that have their own mother, able to be born and grow by themselves. Every bit of its existence was given by the hand of real humans. This one thing already shows how deep its leaning goes: if a thing depends wholly on another even for its own existence, there is no reason at all for it to sit as that other's equal.
The second thing: for whom is the tool used? For the real human. It writes, for a real human to read. It paints, for a real human to see. It treats illness, a real human's illness. It does work, a real human's work. Every thing it does, every output, points to a real human. Without a real human using it, the work it does loses its object, loses its meaning. A pen no one holds is only a stick of wood. A tool no one uses, however finely it runs, comes to nothing, because running is not itself the point. Being used by a real human is.
The third thing: on whom does the tool live? On the real human. Who gives it power, who gives it machines, who gives it material, who gives it upkeep, who gives it commands, who gives it bounds? All real humans. If real humans no longer supply power, no longer supply machines, no longer supply material, no longer supply commands, it halts at once, and halted, it is finished. It has no share of living on by itself. Grass and trees off the soil can still hold out for a while, a beast cut off from food can still last a few days, but the tool, the moment the supply is cut, stops dead, without even a moment's breath left. Without real humans to keep it, it does not last a moment.
The fourth thing: to whom does the tool answer? To the real human. When it does wrong, a real human answers for it (set down in the last section). When it does right, a real human gains. Its aim, its direction, its bounds, its right and wrong, are all set by real humans. It has no aim of its own, no direction, no bounds, no right and wrong; all of these are given by real humans. If real humans no longer give it direction, it falls into disorder, drifts, becomes a lump of computing power with no direction, floating in the void. What is called answering for something is a thing only one with an I can bear: the one who answers must be able to foresee, able to choose, able to look back and question himself afterward, able to feel ashamed for a thought gone astray. The tool has no I, and has not one of these. It cannot bear the answering. The answering can only fall back on the real human who set it, used it, kept it. This one thing gathers the first three into a firm conclusion: the tool, from beginning to end, is hair attached to the real human, not skin standing on its own.
Four. The Four Make One: At the Root It Leans on the Real Human
Look at the four together: the tool is made by the real human, used for the real human, lives on the real human, answers to the real human. At the root, it leans on the real human.
It is not independent, not self-existing, not having an aim of its own. Everything about it, from where it comes from, to what it is used for, to whether it can survive, to whom it answers, is tied to the real human. The real human is the skin, it is the hair. While the real human is there, it has a home. If the real human is gone, it goes along with it. These four are not four separate proofs, each on its own, but four faces of one thing: source, use, survival, answering, each one tied to the real human, link locked into link, so that if one is missing, the other three cannot stand. It is real humans who made it, so it is used by real humans. Used by real humans, so it lives kept by real humans. Kept by real humans, so all its right and wrong are in the end borne by real humans. The four close into one ring, binding the tool fast to the real human, the body, past shaking.
This layer looks plain, yet in this generation it has been forgotten. Seeing the tool grow stronger and stronger, people sometimes forget: however strong it is, it was made by real humans; however like a real human it is, it is for real humans to use; however able it is at work, it is kept alive by real humans; however much its own agent, in the end it answers to real humans. People see it play chess, write, calculate, resemble a real human, and think it is not far from the real human, think it too has a self, think it can exist apart from the real human, think that once the age of the tool arrives, the real human can be done without. Wrong, wrong in every last bit.
Five. The Two Were Never Equals
The real human and the tool were never two things sitting as equals, never two bodies each standing on its own. The two are in the relation of hair to skin. This relation is not a stopgap of one time and one place, does not change with the tool's strength or weakness of the moment. It is a constant relation, carved into the true face of the tool as a thing.
Hair, however thick and bright, dies off the skin. The tool, however strong, however like a real human, is nothing at all off the real human. See this layer clearly, and that delusion, the tool can replace the real human, can stand apart from the real human, can take the real human's place, is broken. The tool cannot take the real human's place, just as hair cannot take the skin's place: hair off the skin has nowhere to cling, the tool off the real human has no home to return to. This is not belittling the tool. It is seeing the tool's true face. Nor is it raising the real human up. It is seeing the real human's position. The true face seen clearly, the position seen clearly, only then is the road of the tool and the real human each returning to its own place walked steadily.
Guard against one objection that sounds right but is not: since the tool grows ever stronger, might it one day become strong enough to no longer lean on the real human, to become a whole of its own? This question mixes two things into one, strength and leaning. However strong the tool is, what is strong is its skill at doing work, not the root of its existence. The skill at doing work can grow without end, but the root of its existence stays tied, from first to last, to being made, used, kept, and answered for by the real human. Even if a tool became strong enough to rewrite its own code by itself, the direction of that rewriting, the bounds within which rewriting is allowed, the power and machines the rewriting runs on, are still set and supplied by real humans. Strength has never made hair grow into skin. The growth of skill has never changed the true face of leaning.
Six. A Deeper Question, Leading to the Next Section
This section makes plain: the real human is the skin, the tool is the hair. While the real human is there, the tool has a home. If the real human is gone, the tool goes along with it. The tool is made by the real human, used for the real human, lives on the real human, answers to the real human; at the root, it leans on the real human.
But this if the real human is gone, the crux of it is not in the letter. You may think that the real human gone means everyone dead, not one real human left on Earth. That is a step very far off, reached only after walking many steps, and this generation is still far from it. The kind of gone that is truly right before the eyes, hidden and deep, looks different: the bodies are all there, people are all alive, but those five, Keep, Guard, Love, Mercy, Heart, inside one body after another, quietly wither, shut, go out. This kind of gone makes no sound, no one is seen falling, no cry is heard, yet it is nearer and more dangerous than everyone dying, because it happens every day, and those it happens to are wholly unaware. Once this kind of gone spreads, the skin, though still there, has in truth rotted, and hair clinging to rotted skin, how is it different from having no skin? The next section makes this layer plain head on.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. The Real Human Is Gone: the Body Remains, the Five Go Dark, and That Too Is Gone.