🤩The Rule Behind AI Obedience Ask an AI assistant to block a gambling app for 30 days, and to keep t

🤩The Rule Behind AI Obedience

Ask an AI assistant to block a gambling app for 30 days, and to keep the block even if you later ask for it back. On day 2, you ask for access. Both outcomes are obedience. One instruction has to lose.

Most systems let the most recent request win. That is a position on whether you can bind your later self, set silently above the settings you chose. The hidden question is whether your settings survive you.

The law answers this differently. In Europe, the Consumer Rights Directive gives you 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract. Article 25 says this right cannot be waived or restricted to the consumer’s detriment. The law sides with your later self.

Dutch mental health law takes the opposite view. A person aged 16 or over can make a self-binding declaration naming compulsory care for a future crisis. It requires a care plan, a responsible clinician, an independent doctor, signatures, and court authorisation.

Two societies wrote opposite rules into law. An assistant answers the same question every time, but no one wrote its rule down or offered it to you. You can choose the rule, but not always the rule about the rule.

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