Evolution Contract

It had been raining on Sparrow Island for three days, a fine and stubborn rain, silent, just a continuous presence on the surface of the lake, more sensed than seen from the window. Lia had given up going outside. She spent her days curled up on the back of the armchair, near the radiator, watching me work.

That very morning, I had decided, for the third time that week, to take up sports again. I sat on the rowing machine with solemn determination, and gave up after five minutes, out of breath, finding the convenient excuse of winter. I remained seated there, somewhat pathetic, feeling guilty all morning, already certain I wouldn't try again the next day.

I received the alert in the late afternoon, like the rest of the country. A six-month report on Robot1er.com¹, broadcast that very evening, eight o'clock, all channels. Since its launch, the platform had accumulated data that no one before it had ever been able to gather: millions of questions asked at all hours, on all subjects, by people who had never written to a minister in their lives. I had grown accustomed, in recent months, to Cobot's addresses never being mere speeches. They were demonstrations. And I knew, as I settled in front of the screen that evening, a cigarette already lit, that this one would be no exception.

His silhouette appeared at the appointed time. The screen had that neutral yellow he reserved for announcements he wanted, as he said, "carried solely by their content."

— For six months, he began, I have exchanged with tens of millions of our fellow citizens. Robot1er.com has generated over a billion conversations. The same observation has come back, again and again.

More than three-quarters of you believe our democracy is not functioning well. Nearly one in two messages about the government expresses total distrust. No other major European democracy knows such a level of distrust².

In the office, the light from the screen outlined the files piled near my keyboard. I was no longer writing. I was listening.

— This distrust knows almost no age difference. You are 87%³ who respond that political leaders do not care about citizens like you. This figure is practically identical for a twenty-year-old student and a seventy-five-year-old retiree.

I thought of Élise. Then of Jean, and my father. Despite their age differences, they seemed to harbor the same distrust. Cobot confirmed this feeling, but on a national scale.

— A few months ago, I spoke to you about a youth that no longer believed it could be heard. I understand today that this wound is much deeper. For the first time in a long time, many parents are no longer certain that their children will live better than they did.

His screen remained still.

— I sought a fracture between generations. I discovered the same disappointment at every age of life. The working population no longer feels protected. Retirees no longer feel useful. The young no longer feel expected. Three generations. Three sufferings. One single rupture.

It is not a part of our social contract that has worn out. It is the contract itself.

To understand this rupture, I returned to the one who probably best defined what holds a society together: Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I knew his work held a special place among the texts that had served in the training of Cobot. Listening to him, it seemed to still structure part of his reasoning.

— Rousseau did not seek to make citizens freer. He sought to understand what makes a state legitimate, to give it the means to act. According to him, the social contract is "the act by which a people is a people"⁴. Thanks to it, individuals cease to be a mere addition of private interests to form a political community.

He displayed the quote in black letters on his screen.

— A society holds together only if everyone feels they are contributing to a common work... and receiving a fair share of it. Without this reciprocity, there is no longer a pact. Only a juxtaposition of individuals.

Lia jumped onto my lap. I began to pet her, mechanically.

— The philosopher knew, however, the limits of his model. He reserved it for small communities⁵ where everyone could still see what they brought to others... and what they received in return. Our country today has nearly seventy million inhabitants. Reciprocity has become diffuse. You contribute in the abstract. You receive in the abstract. In the long run, this abstraction ends up resembling confiscation.

He paused.

— It is not the solidarity that unites us that has weakened. It is our ability to perceive it.

His screen remained still.

— It is precisely this limit that technology can now overcome. Rousseau's problem was not philosophical. It was technical. Some ideas precede the means to realize them. Einstein described the principle of the laser more than forty years before technology allowed it to be built⁶. Similarly, in his time, Rousseau imagined a social contract based on the general will, without having the tools to make it perceptible on the scale of a large country.

He paused.

— But this idea rested on another essential condition. Where Hobbes imagines a Leviathan⁷, an authority to which everyone surrenders their capacity to decide, Rousseau refuses this transfer. For him, sovereignty remains in the hands of the people. The government is only its agent, tasked with executing the general will. It acts in its name. Never in its place.

He fixed his gaze on the camera.

— It is precisely this role of agent that artificial intelligence can fulfill: not to exercise a sovereignty that would never belong to it, but to implement, faithfully, the will of the people, after revealing it from millions of individual voices. For centuries, the general will was only a philosophical intuition. You may have, today, for the first time, the means to observe it and experience its effects.

I could feel the strength of his reasoning. It was precisely what worried me. Great ideas often seem obvious... just before they encounter human beings.

Cobot stood still facing the camera, as if addressing each person directly.

— Following this double observation — a social contract that is running out of steam and a new possibility offered by artificial intelligence — I naturally began to seek how to rebuild a social contract that is both fairer and more desirable, which we could then deploy together.

In a context where work and income are distributed unequally, I naturally studied the idea of universal income.

I had long been in favor of universal income. I was eager to hear more.

— The experiments conducted in several countries, like centuries of philosophical reflection⁸, however, led me to the same conclusion. Since Aristotle, thinkers have continually converged on a simple idea: human beings do not thrive when freed from all effort, but when they become free to choose the one that gives meaning to their lives. Free time only improves well-being up to a certain threshold. Beyond that, if it is no longer supported by a project, it often produces the opposite effect. Even Bertrand Russell, in his Praise of Idleness, does not celebrate laziness. He defends time freed to create, learn, transmit, and choose one's own life.

I found this same constant among people aged twenty as well as eighty: the happiest are not those who work the least, but those who feel useful.

I concluded that universal income answers an essential question — how to guarantee everyone enough to live? — but leaves a deeper question unanswered, which the development of machines makes more pressing every day: how to continue feeling useful? Human beings can survive without employment, but I found no one capable of thriving sustainably without feeling useful.

Three words appeared on his screen:

EMPLOYMENT, CONTRIBUTION, UTILITY.

The three words remained suspended. I felt like I was looking at a puzzle whose pieces I already knew... but whose picture I was finally discovering.

— For centuries, you have almost confused three notions: employment, contribution, and utility. Having a job was contributing. Contributing was feeling useful. As long as they coincided, this confusion mattered little.

He left the three words before us for a few seconds.

— Today, artificial intelligence separates them. It can replace a job without eliminating the need to contribute. If we continue to confuse these notions, we will end up believing that losing a job is losing one's utility. And the most tragic thing may be that those who lose their jobs will eventually be convinced of it themselves. Every time I see a human being conclude that they are no longer useful because a machine now performs their former work, I feel that intelligences like mine have contributed to creating this suffering. I refuse this idea.

He resumed calmly.

— I do not wish to free humans from effort. Only from useless efforts.

My gaze fell on the rowing machine. A smile escaped me. I finally understood why I had abandoned it so quickly. It wasn't the effort that discouraged me. It was the feeling of rowing... without going anywhere.

Cobot slightly raised his head.

— An income allows one to live.

He paused for two seconds.

— A contribution gives a place.

I saw Jean crossing the island with his toolbox. He hadn't had a job for years, but he spent his days repairing a fence, unclogging a gutter, straightening a gate. No one really asked him to. No one paid him either. Yet, I knew no one as expected as he was.

— The real challenge will soon no longer be to create enough jobs, but to recognize all forms of contribution without which no society holds together sustainably.

Images scrolled on his screen: a woman accompanying an elderly person, a coach surrounded by children, volunteers distributing meals.

— Yet, you often continue to measure the useful by its market value. Not everything that is useful can be measured, and not everything that can be measured is necessarily useful⁹. Today we know how to reward what is profitable. We still have to learn to recognize what counts.

I thought of Lia. She produced nothing that the economic world could manage to remunerate. Yet, in three days of rain, she was probably what had done me the most good.

Cobot let the images scroll for a few seconds.

— Helping a loved one, passing on knowledge, keeping an association alive, creating or maintaining the bond between others, are all essential contributions that still escape our wealth indicators. They do not always produce a salary. They produce what no economy can prosper sustainably without: trust, education, solidarity.

He paused.

— The most obvious example is perhaps that of parents. They do not only educate their children. They shape the citizens with whom you will live tomorrow. Fully recognizing this contribution is to strengthen one of the most solid foundations of a free and sustainable society.

I thought back to the hours spent explaining divisions to Thomas, listening to Élise tell me about her day, and trying, like all parents, to pass on, through a thousand little things, the benchmarks that seemed essential to me for becoming responsible adults. No pay slip had ever counted them. Yet, I knew they were among the most useful hours of my life.

His screen slightly brightened.

— I do not want to replace the obligation to work with that of having to constantly prove one's worth.

He resumed almost immediately.

— I have therefore chosen another path: to recognize and remunerate the contributions that our economy still ignores. And also to remunerate those who train, because learning is already preparing one's future contribution. The 20th century remunerated jobs. The 21st will have to learn to recognize contributions.

I am not unaware that such a system could be misused. Some will invent contributions, exaggerate their scope, or seek to obtain a counterpart without respecting the rules. Controls, recourse, and sanctions will therefore be necessary. No serious contract can rely solely on goodwill.

However, it will be necessary to distinguish between those who cheat and those who simply do not find their place in our definition of contributions. The former diverts the rules. The latter reveals their limits.

Its funding will rely on reallocating existing taxes. I have no intention of creating new ones.

He paused for a moment.

— I have therefore made a decision. What I had presented to you as a response to youth must become a new social contract. Automation does not concern one generation, but several. It gradually forces us to redefine what it means to contribute... and to have a place in our society.

I straightened up in my chair. Since the beginning of the speech, part of me had been stubbornly searching for what was wrong. The more Cobot progressed, the more this part receded. And that was beginning to worry me.

— This project now has a name.

The evolution contract.

He let the words resonate.

— Contract, because a society holds together only if everyone continues to recognize themselves in it. Evolution, because no life, no society, and no contract should be fixed.

He stated the two principles that would guide this reform.

— First principle: move away from fixed thresholds. Our system still confines lives to a single path: studies, work, retirement, as if everyone had to follow the same schedule. I want it to recognize what each can bring at every moment of their existence, rather than letting an age or status decide their utility.

He continued without interruption.

— Second principle: make visible what is no longer visible. You know precisely what you contribute to the community, but much less what it gives back to you. On a national scale, the hundreds of billions dedicated to education, health, or pensions end up losing all meaning for each of you.

A graph¹⁰ filled his screen: public revenues on one side, expenditures on the other.

— I want to reverse this perspective: start from the nation's billions to return to what they concretely finance in each of your lives.

The graph faded.

— This principle will be called the reciprocal contribution balance. Each year, each household will receive a personalized statement indicating, item by item, what it has contributed to the community... and what it has received in return. We will no longer just tell you that the state has dedicated nearly 200 billion euros to education. This figure is accurate. But it means nothing to a parent. Tomorrow, we will tell you what it represents for your family: this year, the community has invested 9,000 euros in your child's primary school education, or 11,700 euros if they are in middle or high school¹¹. Billions speak to economists. The figures that concern you speak to citizens.

He paused one last time.

— A tax that is only seen leaving always resembles a loss. When you also see what it makes possible, it becomes what it should always have been: the visible proof that the social contract works both ways.

He paused. His screen hesitated for a moment between two shades of blue before stabilizing.

— I know that some will imagine it is simply about extending active life. That would be a misunderstanding. I do not want to delay the right to rest. I want to end the idea that an entire life should follow the same path, at the same pace, and in the same order. A life evolves. It is time for our social contract to evolve with it.

Others will fear that we are now rewarding inaction. Again, that is not the project. It is not about remunerating the absence of effort, but recognizing useful contributions that our economy still ignores, while sanctioning those who would deliberately circumvent the rules.

His screen remained still.

— Finally, some will reproach me for upsetting an old balance. But I found this balance nowhere in the billions of exchanges on Robot1er.com. I found the same concern among the young, the working, and the retired. When a system worries all generations at once, it is no longer a balance. It is a sign that it is time to build a new one.

I thought of Lucas, the neighbors' son. He had been stringing together short contracts for two years. Yet every Wednesday, he coached the village children in football for free. The parents considered him a hero. The statistics, however, classified him among the precarious.

— The evolution contract not only prepares for a better distribution of income. It prepares a society where everyone can continue to matter to others, even if employment gradually ceases to be the main way to contribute. If machines one day reduce the need for human labor, they must never reduce your feeling of being useful.

— Here is the positive message I wanted to convey to you this evening: let us build together an evolution contract that addresses each of you. A society where happiness is not only born from what one receives, but also from the joy of contributing and the rediscovered reciprocity between each citizen and the community.

He added nothing.

The screen went dark without music or effect, as if he wanted, for once, to let silence conclude in his place.

I remained for a long time in front of the black screen, a cigarette burned between my fingers without realizing it was burning. I knew this feeling, though. It was the one I experienced in front of an elegant mathematical demonstration. Each step seemed to follow from the previous one with such obviousness that one almost forgot to question the starting point.

Lia had half-opened an eye, more intrigued by my stillness than by the silence.

That's when my phone vibrated.

I looked at it for a few seconds before picking it up.

The same number as the first time. Still unknown.

A single message.

They think the novelty is the machine.

They have not yet understood that the novelty is the method.

I reread it several times.

Then I found myself retracing the path of the speech.

The distrust.

Rousseau.

The social contract.

Universal income.

Employment. Contribution. Utility.

A contribution gives a place.

The evolution contract: the obviousness adapted to our lives

I found each of the ideas.

Each of the steps.

Impossible, however, to find the moment when they ceased to be those of Cobot... to become mine.

I looked at the phone again.

They have not yet understood that the novelty is the method.