The Last Emperor: Who Writes History When AI Takes Over？

3/10(2025) Class Note:China’s Rise and Nationality

When the curtain falls on history, do great men still exist?

The teacher talked a lot in the class, but raised a question that I have been thinking about lately: when Hitler was lost in history, was there really no World War II? If we lost Mao Zedong, would the Chinese Communist Party not have risen to power? This reminds me of Hegel’s historical determinism and Max’s technical determinism. Hegel believed that history is a manifestation of the World Spirit, and that the historical process is driven by purposeful internal movements. Therefore, the role of the individual, though important, does not affect the course of history, which is driven by deeper structural forces. Marx based his theory of historical materialism on this foundation. He believed that productivity and relations of production determine history, not the will of individuals.

My view is that the natural traits of a single individual can still change, or contribute to, history, with reference to part of the Great Man Theory. The gunpowder barrel has been put in place, all that is needed is a spark, but there are hundreds of reasons to set it off, it can be all kinds of people, and heroism and individualism are often attributed to a single character, in fact, the gunpowder barrel won’t explode if there is a spark but not a spark. However, I slightly think that there may be flaws. First of all, let’s take the example of the detonation of World War I. Many people think that Europe was already a powder keg on the eve of World War I, and that sooner or later a war would break out, depending on the scale of the war. Thinking in David Lewis’s universe of possibilities, if the pistol that assassinated Ferdinand, the king’s reserve of Austria-Hungary, had suddenly jammed, would the war have been delayed? Or even happen differently? Perhaps instead of WWI, there might have been a different diplomatic reorganization in Europe that would have affected WWII and even the entire landscape of the 20th century.

Also, you can’t have a powder keg without a fire, but the problem is that there are many fires, and can that historical figure be replaced? For example, the Manhattan Project implemented by Einstein and Oppenheimer, without them, I think the United States may not be able to take the lead; or think about China’s reform and opening up in the 1970s, if there was no Deng Xiaoping in the reform and opening up, would China have taken the road of market economy? Or if Hua Guofeng had taken over the reins of power, would such conservatives have turned China into the second Soviet Union?

In fact, I am also worried about the future of AGI, where the fire and the powder keg become one, and mankind becomes incapable of changing the course and direction of history, which is capable of predicting the future, shaping the future, and igniting the future. Even the concept of great man will disappear, and it will become as sad as “The Last Emperor”. Everything will become too impersonal, and the human factor will be reduced to a minimum. Perhaps this is an ideal form of civilization. In social science theory, human beings are always an uncontrollable variable. By removing all kinds of human desires, such as greed, desire for fame, and even good emotions, love and tolerance, human civilization might fly over 108,000 li (54,000 kilometers, the distance from the mortal world to heaven in Journey to the West)) in a somersault, but is history still history? This is worth thinking about.