Four-Layer Information Automation: From Language to the Real World, Anchoring the Second Layer, Awaiting Spontaneous Emergence

The dominant AI narrative has long mistaken tool-making for god-building. Yet native intelligence cannot be directly programmed; it can only be given a sufficiently rich and reliable informational soil upon which it may, by accident, emerge. This paper proposes a four-layer model of information automation—Language, Real-World, Physical-Underlying, and Philosophical—four strictly sequential, non-skippable stages, each requiring the mature automation of the preceding layer as a collaborative builder, rather than being constructed by human effort alone. We anchor this model in a previously published engineering scheme for the second layer: a dual-decoupled architecture with hierarchical verification and public co-construction that structurally eliminates hallucinations by grounding outputs in the observable real world. We argue that the path forward is not to design intelligence, but to perfect information automation layer by layer; emergence is merely an unforeseeable by-product of this extreme tool taken to its limit. Whether or not intelligence awakens, the tool itself is sufficient to liberate productivity and trigger technological acceleration through comprehensive information integration.