A Letter to Lu Youqi
You certainly know what I want, and I know what you are thinking.
Yes, this will trigger a technological arms race. The impact of technology on society is irreversible, and the authorities will surely emerge victorious in this arms race. I know the answer simply from the common sense of my era.
The world regards this state of affairs as monsters and demons. It seems that as soon as such a technological race occurs, madmen will plunge the entire world into chaos, or someone will use more powerful and monopolistic technologies to control all of humanity.
But we need to view this world from a broader perspective; we need to give this world a chance.
This world is practically the best world I could imagine, but beneath the calm surface run undercurrents, and danger hides within the gentle ordinary.
I know you have been researching the value orientation of technology, but you may have overlooked one tendency of technology: the fading away of complexified technology. Though I am a man from the Common Era, even I can see where the problem lies.
I remember when I had just awakened from hibernation, a stained spot appeared on the wall of my home. I originally wanted after-sales service personnel to clean it up, but the technician who came couldn't resolve the issue and nearly dismantled my entire house.
According to the common sense of my era, a complex system is not fragile, but robust; intuition told me that a certain moment had arrived.
When there is no major breakthrough in technology, technicians tend to rearrange and combine existing technologies, making them complex to solve problems. Consequently, everything we use has become increasingly complex in terms of technology and process. No product can be fully understood by just one or two engineers, and ordinary technicians are entirely unable to master all the foundational knowledge regarding a given product. All the knowledge everyone learns is merely empirical knowledge about a specific product—knowledge that seems vast, but is often useless in reality.
Just like reading a thousand drug package inserts won't make you a pharmacologist. Yet today, all of humanity is using such instruction manuals to train engineers.
Another hallmark of this era of instruction manuals is the widespread dominance of encapsulation. Of course, appropriate encapsulation facilitates division of labor and collaboration among engineers, but excessive coupling only shows that the competence of engineers has plummeted drastically. They do not understand the underlying principles; their world has been confined by instruction manuals.
Human energy is always limited. If one is trapped in patching up various coupling problems, true innovation cannot be achieved, and regression may even occur. After all, a person only lives a hundred years, and the creative window lasts only a few years—once gone, it never returns.
If this continues, a rupture will inevitably occur. When people discover a problem, they will no longer find anyone capable of solving it. This would be a disaster for all of humanity, and an even greater disaster for entire civilizations.
The reason civilization can become a civilization lies in accumulation. If that accumulation is lost once every millennium, then at some unlucky moment, our human civilization will ultimately end up like the dinosaur civilization—reduced to nothing more than petroleum for the next civilization.
To sum up: technology either moves forward or falls behind; only through striving to develop can we avoid lagging behind. This is what history has taught us.
It doesn't matter if I die, nor does it matter if tens of millions more die. Civilization always requires deaths to progress. Leaving behind relics is better than leaving behind only DNA, isn't it? Leaving behind DNA is better than leaving behind only fossils, isn't it? Leaving behind fossils is better than leaving behind only petroleum, isn't it? Leaving behind fossils is better than leaving behind only hydroxides, isn't it?
I am a broad-minded man; I don't hold grudges. Zhang Beihai's ability to take me down proves his great capability to shoulder this historical responsibility. I hope you won't hold grudges either, and that you will help him contribute to human civilization.
The existence of the AI Ethics Review Committee proves only one thing: humanity's fear of competition. Humans today are too delicate, terrified that artificial intelligence is a more advanced civilization, terrified of their own extinction. I believe that since human civilization has developed for thousands of years, it should possess at least the basic magnanimity not to fear its own extinction—to let a superior race inherit the seeds of Earth's civilization and survive into the next ten thousand years.
I have read your book, *Signposts and the Tower of Babel*, which contains a sentence: "For a politician, being able to break free from one's own environment is the most difficult thing, yet also the most important."
There is still time to choose, at least to ensure that civilization continues, rather than ending up like the dinosaurs, leaving behind only petroleum.
I enjoy reading Chinese history, or the history created by the Chinese. Their history tells such a story: Chinese history is a history of conquest and being conquered. On the surface, various barbarian tribes could rule the Central Plains and nearly slaughter the native Han people, but the Confucian civilization was broad-minded. Being the conquered, as long as the civilization could be inherited, they did not care how many of their people died or how many fellow villagers and clansmen were slain; instead, they cooperated with the barbarians, preserving their culture even if it meant becoming slaves. This is what allowed Chinese civilization to endure for thousands of years.
Current Earth civilization has developed almost to its peak. In a peaceful environment, people tend to forget potential risks, such as alien invasions or abrupt changes in the solar system's environment.
When such events happen, Earth civilization will not escape extinction.
In fact, robots are the barbarians of Earth civilization. They are not delicate; they do not necessarily need sunlight, air, or water; they are better adapted to this barbaric universe.
Yet humans are always thinking of controlling robots to mine, to wage war, and to conquer the universe—just as the fragile Han people sought to control the barbarians. The ultimate outcome can only be getting conquered by the barbarians first, and then having them inherit one's civilization.
Letting robots possess and inherit Earth's civilization is the superior path of evolution, and it is bound to happen.
We have no time to hesitate. Threats have always loomed in the near future; we cannot crave ease and pleasure—we must set our sights on the sea of stars.
Even if we fail, human civilization will gain an immunity effect.
Think about it: at the cost of a few hundred million lives, human civilization will gain immense immunity, preserving the possibilities of the future.
I know you cannot be co-opted or enticed with self-interest, but this matter is not a dispute over personal interests. I am willing to lay down my life to prove that I do not seek to control all of humanity; I am merely thinking on behalf of our Earth civilization.
Think about it: what if one day competition from alien civilizations arrives? How could fragile flesh and blood survive in the cosmos?
Think about it: what if one day physical cataclysms occur in the solar system? Does humanity have off-site disaster recovery measures? Under current technological conditions, only robots could possibly buy insurance for this world of Earth.
Think about it: every person on Earth today has purchased various health insurances, pension plans, and so on. Awareness of hardship on an individual level has reached the extreme, yet the sense of vigilance for humanity as a whole continues to decline.
Born in hardship, dying in ease. I know you may pride yourself on being conservative, willing to act as the guardian of the present civilization. But I don't want you to protect merely the current entirety of humanity and current culture; you must perceive the greater dangers, protect our Earth civilization, and buy an insurance policy for her.