Posts Tagged ‘Mediation’

“Mediation”

October 9, 2026


Ricardo F. Morín
Untitled, 2005
Charcoal and black Sharpie pen
24 × 18 inches

Developers, governments, and those affected by artificial intelligence assign different significance to the same technical achievement.  A developer seeking commercial advantage may treat an advance as grounds for ownership.  A government concerned with strategic predominance may treat it as an instrument of national power.  Those exposed to its consequences may judge it through its effects upon employment, education, communication, or public judgment.  Each perspective depends upon relations that the achievement alone does not disclose.

These relations participate in development itself.  Investors influence which problems receive attention.  Owners determine who may use a capability and under what conditions.  Governments establish permissions, restrictions, and incentives.  The technology available to a user embodies decisions whose purposes need not be evident in its operation.

An answer appears on a screen.  Its fluency may lead the user to accept it as sufficient for understanding.  Yet the answer alone does not disclose how developers trained the system, which sources informed its response, what restrictions govern its output, or how developers organize its presentation to invite confidence.  The user may find the answer useful without knowing all these conditions.  That usefulness does not establish the adequacy of the answer.

Mediation names this dependence:  understanding rests upon relations that attention to its immediate object does not necessarily reveal.  The answer occupies the user’s attention.  The conditions supporting its production, presentation, and acceptance remain only partially visible.

The public accounts of artificial intelligence exhibit a comparable dependence.  Commercial accounts identify innovation through investment, demand, and return.  Strategic accounts identify technological capacity through advantage over competitors.  Security accounts identify uses through the dangers they introduce or prevent.  Each account directs attention toward relations relevant to its purpose.  Each leaves questions that its governing purpose cannot adequately answer.

These accounts also inform decisions.  An institution that measures achievement through commercial return has grounds to favor applications for which customers will pay.  A government that measures achievement through strategic advantage has grounds to favor capabilities that strengthen its position.  The criteria through which an institution recognizes value therefore bear upon the purposes it authorizes and the resources it assigns.  What remains outside those criteria may lack an effective claim upon its decisions.

Those who determine the terms of recognition can influence which needs count as reasons for action.  Their authority does not follow from the completeness of their account.  It may rest upon ownership, financial resources, statutory powers, or control over infrastructure.  An account can govern development and can still leave much of its social significance unexamined.

The United States’ 2025 AI Action Plan explicitly frames development as a race for global dominance, and links technological leadership with economic and military advantage.  The United Nations’ Global Digital Compact places international governance within a commitment to public benefit and inclusive participation.  The former sets out actions for federal agencies; the latter records commitments among participating states.  The purposes expressed in these documents operate through different institutional means.  Their coexistence supplies no common authority for deciding between them when their demands conflict.  [1]

Commercial success establishes that a product attracts expenditure.  It does not establish how its benefits and burdens are distributed.  National predominance establishes an advantage relative to other powers.  It does not establish that the advantage improves the circumstances of those subject to its consequences.  Protection against malicious use addresses a necessary concern.  Authorized uses may also diminish the ability of people to understand, question, or influence decisions affecting them.

The capacities under development nevertheless permit achievements of substantial human value.  Researchers can incorporate particular capabilities into successive stages of inquiry, and use them to examine complex relations, formulate hypotheses, and assist the design of inventions.  Particular applications may support advances in medicine, materials, or other fields concerned with human welfare.  The value of an achievement depends upon what it enables people to do and upon the consequences of its use.  Commercial ownership or strategic sponsorship does not exhaust that value.

The same capacity to assist inquiry introduces uncertainty when institutions delegate decisions and actions to systems.  Developers and users may permit a system to select means, initiate operations, or act upon other systems with limited intervention.  Its effects then depend upon the scope of that permission, the conditions governing its operation, and the ability of those responsible to inspect or interrupt its actions.

Agency in these circumstances need not resemble human intention to exert power over human affairs.  A system can influence conduct through recommendations that institutions routinely accept, classifications upon which access depends, or operations carried out under delegated authority.  Uncertainty concerns how its actions will interact with circumstances its designers and users cannot fully anticipate, and how effectively human beings can retain control over those interactions.

The system may also influence the relations through which people understand and authorize its use.  If an institution relies upon it to identify priorities, assess evidence, or evaluate performance, its outputs inform decisions about subsequent delegation.  Authority initially granted by human beings can therefore support operations that shape the grounds upon which further authority is granted.  The institution’s reliance upon the system extends beyond the performance of a task to the judgment of what tasks deserve performance and under whose direction.

Incremental benefit and uncertainty about agency can coexist within the same arrangement.  An invention may improve human welfare, and may increase reliance upon systems that those affected cannot readily examine or contest.  That reliance may rest upon cost, infrastructure, contractual restrictions, or the absence of practicable alternatives.  Limited understanding can impede scrutiny of the arrangement without constituting its sole cause.  The achievement retains its value.  That value supplies no sufficient account of the reliance established through its use.

The betterment of society consequently depends upon more than the intentions of those directing development.  If those institutions retain exclusive authority to define improvement, their criteria govern which consequences receive recognition.  A gain in productivity may accompany diminished security of employment.  Greater access to information may accompany greater reliance upon a small number of providers.  Expanded capabilities may leave those affected with fewer means of challenging their application.

Who receives the benefit, who bears the burden, and who possesses authority to decide are distinct questions.  An assessment confined to aggregate improvement can conceal the differences upon which its judgment rests.

The global reach of artificial intelligence extends those differences across societies.  Worldwide availability does not establish worldwide participation in determining its purposes.  A community may receive a system without the resources to adapt it to its language, examine its limitations, or challenge its terms of use.  Providers extend access while they retain control over the conditions of participation.  The technology serves a wider population without a corresponding distribution of authority over its development.

Nor does an appeal to the common good settle whose purposes should govern.  Judgments about the common good depend upon whose circumstances receive attention, which consequences carry weight, and what forms of reliance people are prepared to accept.  Institutions may affirm universal benefit while excluding affected communities from those judgments.

Technical competence, financial resources, political authority, security, and social need each sustain claims upon development.  None supplies a sufficient account of the whole.  Their unequal institutional power bears upon which claims govern, which remain negotiable, and which lack any effective means of expression.

Where institutions treat one criterion as sufficient, their judgments substitute a partial measure for the relations supporting it.  Commercial actors identify expansion with progress.  Governments identify predominance with protection.  Security authorities identify the prevention of prohibited uses with safety.  Providers identify availability with participation.  Each identification leaves dependencies outside the account through which the undertaking is justified.

The answer on the screen offers the user something immediately available for judgment.  Its usefulness may be real.  Its fluency does not disclose who determined its conditions, what authority supports its use, or how reliance upon it influences subsequent judgment.  The emerging capacities of artificial intelligence extend the consequences of those relations.  Those who delegate authority to systems require knowledge of the conditions governing the systems and powers to withhold, limit, or revoke that delegation.  Those affected without participating in the delegation stand in a different relation:  their ability to contest its consequences depends upon access to the grounds of decisions and institutional means of holding the delegating authorities answerable.

Ricardo F. Morín

October 5, 2026

Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania

[1] The White House, America’s AI Action Plan, July 2025:  
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf

United Nations, Global Digital Compact, Annex I to the Pact for the Future, 2024:  
https://www.un.org/pact-for-the-future/en/annex-i-global-digital-compact

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“PENDING MATTERS”

August 29, 2026
Ricardo F. Morín
Temple of Zeus Underwater
CGI
2003

The siblings had spent many years trying to conclude matters that had survived both of their parents.  Their father had died nearly three decades earlier.  Their mother died years after him, and even then the responsibilities did not end.  Properties remained unsold.  Before those matters were completed, another loss entered the family.  The middle sister died the year before.  Her own property and affairs now had to be incorporated into responsibilities that had already extended across many years.

Old registries and chains of title extending into the nineteenth century carried certifications, seals, and annotations from different decades and governments.

The country itself had changed during the last three decades.  Currency and property lost value before transactions could be completed.  Offices closed and reopened under different regulations, sometimes even under different names.

To release properties, formalize transfers, and liquidate assets, it became necessary to gather records, certifications, and documentary chains that different offices and fiscal authorities required for review.  Procedures stalled among administrative demands, fiscal obligations, and intermediaries capable of accelerating processes that otherwise could remain paralyzed for months.  Files accumulated beside seals, signatures, and annotations originating from different decades.

The matters had already extended across months and years.  Meanwhile the siblings aged separately on opposite sides of the Atlantic.  The oldest, still practicing law in Venezuela, continued moving between courts, registries, and offices in pursuit of unresolved claims and transfers.

At the same time, land previously belonging to the family remained tied to a legal dispute after having been illegally expropriated by the State years earlier.  Defending the claim required certifications, archival records, legal filings, authorizations, appeals, and countersuits.  Municipal fees, taxes, and procedural costs continued accumulating while the responsibilities themselves remained unfinished.

From outside the country, it was possible to perceive only partially how procedures there changed from month to month and sometimes from day to day.  Some introduced further demands.  Others became unavailable altogether.  Another day had already been spent moving between offices, registries, and courts.

Messages moved constantly between them through calls, forwarded emails, receipts, scanned documents, explanations, and reminders.  One sibling asked whether a payment could still be completed before another increase in tax fees made the transfer even more burdensome.  The reply listed offices already visited that week and certifications still missing.  Before the question returned again, the exchange had shifted toward an earlier disagreement others believed had already been resolved.

The second oldest, who had left Venezuela many years earlier, explained to one sibling that reminders concerning powers of attorney were meant to prevent delays.  To another, he explained that unanswered messages were beginning to be understood differently.  One sibling wrote late into the night to avoid misunderstanding.  Another answered briefly the next morning before returning to the offices.

A signature believed to be sufficient was later rejected for lacking an additional authentication no one had mentioned before.  One office requested papers already sent weeks earlier.  Another confirmed receipt but could not say when the matter would be reviewed.  A delayed response no longer remained only a delay.

Some questions received partial replies.  Others were acknowledged and left unanswered.  A message asking whether the funds could still be sent before the end of the month received only this reply:  “We are doing what we can from here.”  Another asking whether the property sale documents had already been submitted received a response about summer travel plans and whether the necessary signature would still be available in time.

He remembered a childhood game in which a sentence passed from one person to another until it returned altered, sometimes accidentally and sometimes not.  At the time, the changes were part of the amusement.

When he attempted to describe some of this, one sibling told him that he was philosophizing again.  The remark was mild enough to avoid argument, yet the explanation did not continue after that.

A requirement completed one week returned the next with another condition attached to it.

A message revised several times before being sent remained unanswered for days.  Another received only a brief acknowledgment that did not refer to what had actually been written.  By the time the next reply arrived, what had gone unanswered in the earlier message had already begun shaping the exchange that followed.

Later, a message arrived saying that one of the unresolved matters had finally been completed.  No one referred to what had preceded the resolution.  The exchanges resumed in a calmer tone, and attention moved toward whatever remained pending.

*

Ricardo F. Morín, May 7, 2026, Bala Cynwyd, PA.

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“The Illusion of Self Protection”

July 1, 2026
Ricardo F. Morin
Platonic 3
CGI
2005

*

War, division, distrust, and uncertainty do not merely unsettle a society.  Under sustained exposure to threat, whether external or internal, a society can gradually orient itself around protection as its primary civic posture.  What begins as prudence may harden into habit.  What begins as defense may become entitlement.

Threat is sometimes real.  People are assaulted.  Homes are invaded.  No system of governmental vigilance can cover every private moment.  In extreme cases, any citizen may act proportionately to preserve life.  Such moments are tragic and immediate, but emergencies cannot define the structure of a society, because civic order must be built on general conditions rather than exceptional events.

Arms, in this context, are not only instruments of defense.  They are also adopted in response to insecurity.  A weapon promises capacity for defense when institutions appear distant or delayed.  Yet no instrument can abolish vulnerability.  Risk cannot be eliminated.  When weapons of defense are used not only in emergencies but also as a habitual source of reassurance, expectation exceeds reality because no instrument can eliminate risk.  When risk persists, the demand for reassurance grows rather than recedes.

In the United States, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, inscribed the right to bear arms within constitutional language.  That inscription altered the character of the debate.  A measure framed within a specific historical setting became a continuing constitutional claim.  The right is now defended within civic identity and political standing even where the original historical rationale is no longer accepted as controlling.  When constitutional language is treated as permission without proportion, protection displaces limitation and mediation weakens.

A recursive pattern follows.  Perceived threat justifies defensive expansion.  Defensive expansion heightens vigilance.  Heightened vigilance sustains the perception of threat.  The instrument intended for extremity becomes part of ordinary expectation.  What was meant for emergency becomes routine.  The tool does not create insecurity; it sustains the illusion that insecurity can be permanently mastered.  The logic resembles that of rival states engaged in arms accumulation, where possession is defended as protection while the underlying condition of vulnerability remains unchanged.

The distribution of lethal capacity and normalized readiness develop together.  Even when no weapon is wielded, the normalization of lethal capacity alters civic disagreement, because the standing possibility of force becomes part of ordinary interaction.  Suspicion becomes habit.  Habit alters how citizens meet one another in public and shapes the conditions under which disagreement unfolds.

At the level of nations, the nuclear age produced a parallel logic of reassurance through destructive capacity.  The strategic doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction sought stability through reciprocal vulnerability, assuming that the certainty of catastrophic retaliation would prevent escalation.  Yet even such systems ultimately depend upon uninterrupted judgment within complex command structures.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the launch of a nuclear torpedo from the Soviet submarine B-59 was prevented only when the officer Vasily Arkhipov refused authorization.  The episode illustrates that systems built upon catastrophic capacity may appear stable while depending upon moments of individual restraint that no doctrine can guarantee.  In these moments the mechanical logic of force can be interrupted by a single act of recognition:  one person acknowledging a shared human condition that no system of power can override.

Proportionality remains decisive because scale alters consequence.  An implement suitable to repel immediate assault differs categorically from weaponry capable of rapid and indiscriminate lethality.  The greater the destructive capacity, the greater the need for regulation.  Rights operate within structures that set limits; they do not suspend them.  When lethal capacity is widely normalized, large scale misuse becomes structurally possible rather than exceptional.  If weapons are treated as a habitual source of reassurance, recurring episodes of mass violence expose the limits of that reassurance rather than resolve insecurity.

The deeper issue concerns collective power and instrumental force.  Collective power arises when citizens act together within a shared framework that presumes conflict will be resolved without violence.  Instrumental force operates through the use of defensive mechanisms that require no agreement beyond their use.  When reliance on such mechanisms increases, shared political action diminishes because reassurance shifts from institutions toward individual capacity.

Defense responds to threat in particular moments.  Freedom requires durable trust that such moments will remain exceptional rather than permanent.  A polity organized primarily around permanent anticipation of threat alters its character because precaution begins to replace confidence in mediation.  Sovereignty shifts from shared institutions toward individual possession.  Assurance becomes individualized.  The presumption that conflicts will be managed through common processes weakens.

The argument does not deny the reality of threat or the tragedy of immediate self defense.  It establishes that arming oneself with weapons of defense cannot serve as a stable foundation of civic assurance, because civic order depends upon mediation, shared limits, and acceptance that vulnerability cannot be abolished.  Emergency thinking cannot become normal thinking.  The task is not to abolish defense but to prevent defense from defining the grammar of coexistence.

*

Ricardo F. Morín

March 4, 2026

Oakland Park, Florida

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