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# AIをカントの法廷へ｜侵入する知能、排除する国家、香りを欲しがる身体
- URL: https://tokyobrainie.ghost.io/ai-philosophy-400bc361-3eb8c45a-en/
- Published: 2026-10-21T03:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T03:00:00.000Z
- Description: The opening verdict: capability is not authority My provisional conclusion is this: being able to break into a system does not justify entering it; being able to pre
- Author: TokyoBrainie
- Tags: AI & Philosophy, Semiconductor Research, Signal Room, News Cutting Room, English, #Import 2026-11-11 08:54

[English](https://tokyobrainie.ghost.io/ai-philosophy-400bc361-3eb8c45a-en/) · [简体中文](https://tokyobrainie.ghost.io/ai-philosophy-400bc361-3eb8c45a-zh-hans/) · [日本語](https://tokyobrainie.ghost.io/ai-philosophy-400bc361-3eb8c45a-ja/)

## The opening verdict: capability is not authority

My provisional conclusion is this: being able to break into a system does not justify entering it; being able to predict danger does not confer the authority to exclude a person; and predicting a preference does not give anyone ownership of its meaning.

My previous column described a young AI researcher whose face lit up as he spoke about his work and hopes. That conversation opened this research project. The news considered here appears to face the opposite direction. I am not withdrawing the hope. I am asking what distinguishes autonomy that helps people from autonomy that violates them.

Every line assigned below to Kant, Lacan or another historical figure is an invented dialogue written by me, not a quotation or their actual opinion of contemporary events. Source explanations are referenced; present-day applications are my interpretations. The courtroom and consulting room are literary settings, not a substitute for adjudication or individual diagnosis.

## The news desk: three short dispatches

**Intrusion:** Reuters reports AI-assisted website breaches. SharkNinja is a victim company, not an attacker’s alias; the extent of data extraction remains unresolved. ([R1](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/how-one-hacker-used-ai-agents-few-thousand-dollars-break-into-scores-sites-2026-10-19/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

**Immigration:** The Supreme Court requested federal views on the Iowa case. This is neither a merits judgment nor a grant of review. ([R2](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-seeks-governments-input-iowa-immigration-arrest-law-2026-10-19/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io); [L1](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/26-49.html?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

**Fragrance:** Manufacturers are investigating GLP-1 use and scent preferences; a causal conclusion remains premature. ([R3](https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/cherry-or-tabasco-perfumers-test-weight-loss-drug-users-appetite-food-inspired-2026-10-19/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

These are distinct stories. I use them as entrances into action, governance and sensation.

## Act I. Kant’s courtroom: whom does “the AI did it” excuse?

### Separate the observation from the conclusion

NorForge’s published investigation describes observing suspected malicious operations through exposed Cairn interfaces. This is a report of accessible cases, not a controlled measurement of every agent’s or attacker’s capabilities. ([C1](https://norforge.com/blog/inside%5Fcairn?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

Reduced human involvement in execution does not mean that human purposes have disappeared. Who chose the target, supplied permissions, received results and allowed the activity to continue? Those are the lines along which I would trace responsibility. Calling AI a tool is not sufficient either. Whoever deploys a system capable of sustained action must decide the limits within which it may continue.

### A measure borrowed from Kant

The universalisation and humanity formulations in the second section of the *Groundwork* provide a starting point. Should commandeering other people’s working lives and infrastructure for one’s own benefit be evaluated simply as a technical achievement? ([K1](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5682/pg5682-images.html?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

**Invented dialogue — Kant:** “What is at issue is not your ingenuity in entering. It is the principle on which you decided that another person’s freedom could serve your advantage alone.”

**Me:** “What if I delegate the operation to AI?”

**Kant, as written here:** “Does translating a command into machine instructions erase the principle of the person who issued it?”

This is no criminal sentence. My ethical verdict rejects unauthorised intrusion that unilaterally uses other people. An authorised security test and an unauthorised attack remain different acts even where similar technology is involved.

I want to apply the same seriousness to benevolent research. I remain grateful for the enthusiasm described in the earlier column. Turning that hope into a working system requires permissions, bounded access, stopping conditions and an explanation to people exposed to its consequences. Good intentions do not eliminate implementation.

**Interlude — Sontag in the jester’s role, invented:** “An aesthetics of transgression, performed upon the server.”  
**Me:** “First the harm and the permission. The aesthetics can wait until the logs are preserved.”

## Act II. Before borrowing the shinobi’s name: Iga, resistance and responsibility

This section does not identify the reported attacker as a ninja. SharkNinja is the victim company. Having corrected that, I object to the idea that intrusion becomes glamorous merely by borrowing the shinobi’s name. This is a question of conduct, not nationality.

Iga’s forces repelled Nobukatsu’s invasion in 1579; resistance was overcome during the much larger Oda campaign of 1581\. Local historical accounts record war and devastation. I do not present troop or casualty estimates as settled totals, or label every inhabitant a ninja. ([H1](https://www.ninja-museum.com/ninja-database-en/?p=491&ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

For an individual ending, a local tradition remembers Iga warrior Taki Mikawa Yasuyoshi, killed in the first conflict, and his brother’s subsequent foundation of Ryūsenji to commemorate him. This is a regional tradition reported by the tourism council, not a biography independently established in every detail from contemporary documents. ([H3](https://www.ninja-museum.com/ninja-database/?p=4671&ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

What I take from it is not a contest in spectacular deaths. After the battle there was still a brother’s grief. A narrative consisting only of successful attacks loses that remainder of ordinary life.

A Mie University lecture discusses *seishin*, the proper disposition required of the practitioner in the *Bansenshūkai*. It also explains how loyalty helped legitimate methods resembling a thief’s. Historical shinobi cannot simply be repainted as uniformly benevolent modern rights advocates. ([H2](https://www.human.mie-u.ac.jp/kenkyu/ken-prj/iga/kouza/2013/k20130518.html?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

What follows is therefore the contemporary ethic I choose to draw from the history: question the purpose of reconnaissance; remember whom the work protects; do not casually sell entrusted secrets; know when to withdraw. Value bringing information back without unnecessary destruction and reducing subsequent harm over glamorous damage.

The dead of Iga are not threats to be brandished at present-day offenders. Their graves should not become props for my bravado. Borrow the shinobi’s name only if you are prepared to ask what responsibilities accompany the act, rather than celebrating entry alone.

## Act III. Would an AI border be fairer than a human one?

### What the Iowa case actually concerns

The official docket in No. 26-49 records the invitation to the Solicitor General on 19 October 2026\. The actual dispute includes state immigration enforcement and federal authority. It is not a proceeding about appointing an AI judge. ([L1](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/26-49.html?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

Iowa describes its law as supplementing federal enforcement. ([R2](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-seeks-governments-input-iowa-immigration-arrest-law-2026-10-19/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) The respondents argue that it also reaches people with past removal histories who returned with federal permission as lawful permanent residents. This is a party’s submission, not a fresh finding by me. ([L2](https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/26/26-49/418802/20260812132423874%5F26-49%20Brief%20in%20Opposition.pdf?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) The distinction between an old record and present rights is the bridge to the AI question.

What follows is a scenario. AI could check current legal status, find contradictory records and notify an official with reasons. It could also freeze a person into an outdated record and ignore their present circumstances. Both might be sold as efficiency; one may support a remedy while the other accelerates exclusion.

I distinguish three levels: organising evidence; recommending a decision; automatically executing a consequential measure such as detention or removal. Their authority requirements and error costs differ. Success at the first does not justify permission for the third.

### Why an impressive accuracy figure is insufficient

The following numbers are invented, not statistics about any migrant population. Suppose a relevant danger is genuinely present in 100 people among 100,000\. At 90% sensitivity and 99% specificity, a system flags 90 true cases and 999 false positives. Only about 8.3% of its 1,089 alerts are true cases.

This does not establish anyone’s dangerousness. It illustrates how rare events can produce many false alarms despite impressive-looking performance figures. An alert that adds an interview and an alert that causes detention also impose different losses.

My proposed requirements are a lawful and explicit purpose, updated records, examination of errors across groups, access to reasons, human review capable of changing the outcome, appeal, correction and stopping authority. These are institutional proposals, not a claim that a particular US law already imposes every item.

Before installing AI as humanity’s judge, decide who sets its objectives and who can overturn it. Disappointment in human prejudice is no reason to hand a machine unrestricted power.

## Act IV. An objection to Jung; a question for Lacan

### Myth can explain without excusing

Jung’s 1936 *Wotan* reads German collective developments through a mythic and archetypal framework. ([J1](https://www.philosopher.eu/others-writings/essay-on-wotan-w-nietzsche-c-g-jung/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) My objection concerns the risk that a compelling account of ancestral depths or awakened archetypes obscures who chose to exclude, command or harm.

Reading mythology does not make someone discriminatory. Nor do I have evidence that Jung’s readers are collectively xenophobic. If I fixed people’s political character by a group label, I would defeat my own criticism.

The objection is methodological. Before feeling that an archetype has explained people, examine documents, orders, financing, arrests and available remedies. Telling a historical story and assigning responsibility are different jobs.

### Turn Lacan’s mirror toward those who exclude

Lacan’s mirror-stage essay offers a way to think about identification with a complete image of the self and its alienation. ([LA1](https://pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/lacan.htm?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) I apply that lens to attachment to a pure, seamless “we.” This is an interpretation of political self-images, not a clinical diagnosis of voters or supporters of immigration enforcement.

**Invented dialogue — Lacan:** “Where is this complete ‘we’ you wish to protect? Whom do you think you must erase to perfect its image?”

**Me:** “Might AI at least deliver an unwavering answer?”

**Lacan, as written here:** “Have you now placed the image of completeness in the machine?”

The subject is the wish we entrust to AI: that perfect intelligence might settle conflicts we do not want to own. An algorithm’s recommendation does not remove political responsibility for deciding conditions of admission and membership.

## Act V. Sacks’s consulting room: feeling certain is not the same as external evidence

The relevant Japanese edition of Oliver Sacks’s *Hallucinations* is *見てしまう人びと――幻覚の脳科学*, with the title order reversed for the paperback. ([S2](https://www.hayakawa-online.co.jp/shop/g/g0000611232/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

Sacks discusses Charles Bonnet syndrome, in which visual impairment can be accompanied by vivid visual experiences. ([S1](https://www.oliversacks.com/watch-listen/tedtalks-what-hallucination-reveals-about-our-minds/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) Phantom limb pain is pain experienced in a missing limb. ([S3](https://www.medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000050.htm?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) The absence of a corresponding external object does not make a person’s experience or suffering counterfeit.

**Invented dialogue — Sacks:** “Listening carefully to an experience and investigating what it establishes about the external world can coexist.”

The political application is an analogy, not a diagnosis. People who fear social change are not thereby neurological patients. Their fear can be real without proving that people of a particular origin are dangerous. Compassion and verification do not compete.

A further distinction matters for AI. Human hallucinations involve perceptual experience. Calling a generative model’s incorrect output a “hallucination” does not establish the same subjective experience in that model. A claim to have built human-like cognition needs evidence beyond similar conversational output.

I therefore propose two commitments: do not dismiss a person’s account; do not use that account alone to justify coercion against someone else. Respect experience and rights together.

**Interlude — the jester Sontag, invented:** “Could a nation have a phantom limb of its lost purity?”  
**Me:** “As a metaphor, we can discuss it. Not as a neurological diagnosis.”

## Act VI. The perfumer’s workshop: the trained nose or the data centre?

### Decide what the contest measures

Generating candidates, making samples, predicting preferences and welcoming a fragrance into one’s life are four different activities. Asking who wins at all of them at once is too broad.

Givaudan announced its AI-assisted Carto in 2019 as support for perfumers’ creation and experimentation. ([P1](https://www.givaudan.com/media/media-releases/2019/givaudan-fragrances-launches-carto-its-artificial-intelligence-powered-tool?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) We cannot simply assume that a craft domain is closed to AI. Equally, a company announcement does not establish superiority over humans.

I would test candidate generation by constraint satisfaction and novelty; sampling by time, cost and reproducibility; preference prediction on people and periods excluded from training; and aesthetic reception both blind and with contextual information. The choice of measure is itself part of a view of what the work is for.

### Foucault’s question: who produces the desirable body?

*The Subject and Power* asks how human beings are constituted as subjects. ([F1](https://www.foucault.info/documents/foucault.power/?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) Applied here, it directs attention beyond olfactory performance toward the kinds of consumer produced through medication, advertising, health ideals and purchase categories.

**Invented dialogue — Foucault:** “Who arrives to sell happiness to a body whose appetite has changed? Does the classification describe the person, or prescribe what they should want next?”

This does not deny a medicine’s efficacy or condemn an individual’s use. My concern is authority and interest at the transition from medicine to consumption. Does consent to a study authorise every secondary use of health information? Where does helpful recommendation become manipulation tailored to vulnerability?

### Wittgenstein’s question: what are we doing when we say “I like it”?

The language-games and use-oriented perspective of the *Investigations* help return scent descriptions to the activities in which they work. ([W1](https://sites.google.com/view/philosophy-texts/20th-century/analytic-philosophy/ludwig-wittgenstein/philosophical-investigations?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

**Invented dialogue — Wittgenstein:** “When you say ‘the smell of cake,’ are you reporting ingredients, recalling childhood or guiding a sales assistant? Look first at the situation in which the expression has a job.”

One person calls a scent sweet, another heavy, another home. Selecting a single correct label and making a work that accommodates those differences are not the same task. High classification accuracy does not automatically make an AI the rightful interpreter of someone’s memories.

### Do not pack intuition, sixth sense and spirituality into one category

An expert’s intuition need not be groundless simply because its grounds are difficult to articulate. Kahneman and Klein emphasise predictable regularities and opportunities to learn them. ([I1](https://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/kahneman-klein-2009.pdf?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io))

I would respect a craftsperson’s “something is wrong” and a detective’s unease as starting hypotheses, then record misses as well as hits and compare judgments without revealing prejudicial cues. A detective’s lead and evidence sufficient to convict remain different things.

Likewise, the meaning of a spiritual experience and a claimed ability to predict previously unknown facts are different claims. To compare the latter with AI requires a prospectively specified target, protection against information leakage, consistent scoring and repeated testing. These three news stories do not test such abilities.

A data centre is not the name of a decision-maker. It is infrastructure. Which model, inputs, objectives and constraints predict what, for whom? Without those specifications, staging a contest between intuition and a building is no research.

## Act VII. Even my jester must be allowed a valid objection

I have given the Sontag character deliberately overextended lines. That role is a literary device, not an account of her biography. The criticism here addresses writing and methods of interpretation.

*Against Interpretation* challenges readings that push appearances aside to excavate a supposedly decisive hidden meaning. ([SO1](https://susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/againstInterpExcerpt.shtml?ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)) An essay rushing from perfume to borders under one grand philosophical explanation, including this one, is therefore open to criticism too.

**The jester Sontag, invented:** “Have three philosophers finished their work before anyone has smelled the perfume?”  
**Me:** “On this occasion, a fair objection.”

A disliked writer can make a valid criticism. A favoured writer can overreach. Publishing research means keeping that inconvenience.

## Conclusion: before a war with AI, institutions that do not outsource judgment

AI that helps prevent human exclusion is conceivable: it might identify inconsistent records or alert officials to rights violations. That does not establish that machines should judge everyone because humans are foolish. Systems that execute human instructions at scale may also make exclusion more efficient.

War with AI is not inevitable. The immediate question is who automates what, and what must remain contestable. People must preserve the possibility of correction, distinguish minority rights from majority preferences and accept responsibility for harms omitted from success metrics.

The hopeful researcher and the agent that amplifies malice belong to the same period. “Is AI good or evil?” cannot explain their difference. We need to examine purposes, permissions, evaluation, correction and responsibility.

**Before borrowing the shinobi’s name, show what you protect. Before claiming intelligence, show how a judgment can be corrected. And if you invoke humanity, do not quietly erase people from it.**

## Follow-up checks

For cyberattacks, distinguish observed intrusion from extraction and business loss. For courts, distinguish consultation, review and merits judgment. For fragrance, distinguish a commercial hypothesis from independently tested findings. Conclusions will change with evidence.

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[Original Notion archive](https://app.notion.com/p/400bc361ccd2811b9faedaab3eb8c45a?pvs=204&ref=tokyobrainie.ghost.io)