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The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant pow

The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control.

salawat 7y ago
>Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. That is patently wrong. A corporation exists to distribute risk, and acommplish a task, ideally in a way that creates value for backers, but it is not a given that all profit creating avenues of behavior are desired or worth the egregious cost in negative externalities, or even that a corporation must generate profit. And unfortunately those control mechanisms you mention seem to be failing with alarming regularity due to regulatory capture.
- pengstrom 7y ago
  That would make more sense if not for the fact that corporations routinely put profit over morals.
- simiones 7y ago
  > it is not a given that [...] a corporation must generate profit I think that you are technically right, in that there can exist not-for-profit corporations. But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any other value, assuming they are operating legally. I completely agree with you that this is not a necessary way of organizing human society, and we are seeing more and more that the current for-profit system is disastrous for the environment and for society in general - especially given the inefficiency of regulation that you also mention.
  - notahacker 7y ago
    > But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any other value, assuming they are operating legally. No they aren't. They do have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of shareholders, which means not taking actions which are unexpected and obviously harmful to other shareholders like paying all the company's revenues to another company wholly owned by the CEO. But that duty to shareholders actually even obligates them to take into account factors other than profit, whether that's mitigating risks or abiding by a shareholder resolution to follow a 'socially responsible' business practice that costs them a lot of profit, and management absolutely also has enough discretion to choose to design and follow its own 'socially responsible' business practices or decline to enter a profitable sector they don't want to involve themselves in. No executive has ever been penalised for not putting profit above any other value. Companies pursuit of profit is much less driven by legal obligation and much more driven by the fact that greater profitability tends to generate greater returns to the management as well as the shareholders.
darwinreally 7y ago
>They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control. East India Company begs to differ.
red75prime 7y ago
What about states then? Major ones are kept in check by a threat of mutually assured destruction. Such tactic will not work in quite the same way for AGI.
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062708.

salawat 7y ago

>Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. That is patently wrong. A corporation exists to distribute risk, and acommplish a task, ideally in a way that creates value for backers, but it is not a given that all profit creating avenues of behavior are desired or worth the egregious cost in negative externalities, or even that a corporation must generate profit. And unfortunately those control mechanisms you mention seem to be failing with alarming regularity due to regulatory capture.

pengstrom 7y ago
That would make more sense if not for the fact that corporations routinely put profit over morals.
simiones 7y ago
> it is not a given that [...] a corporation must generate profit I think that you are technically right, in that there can exist not-for-profit corporations. But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any other value, assuming they are operating legally. I completely agree with you that this is not a necessary way of organizing human society, and we are seeing more and more that the current for-profit system is disastrous for the environment and for society in general - especially given the inefficiency of regulation that you also mention.
- notahacker 7y ago
  > But for-profit corporations, which is what most people think about when they say "corporation" are generally legally required to put profit above any other value, assuming they are operating legally. No they aren't. They do have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of shareholders, which means not taking actions which are unexpected and obviously harmful to other shareholders like paying all the company's revenues to another company wholly owned by the CEO. But that duty to shareholders actually even obligates them to take into account factors other than profit, whether that's mitigating risks or abiding by a shareholder resolution to follow a 'socially responsible' business practice that costs them a lot of profit, and management absolutely also has enough discretion to choose to design and follow its own 'socially responsible' business practices or decline to enter a profitable sector they don't want to involve themselves in. No executive has ever been penalised for not putting profit above any other value. Companies pursuit of profit is much less driven by legal obligation and much more driven by the fact that greater profitability tends to generate greater returns to the management as well as the shareholders.

darwinreally 7y ago

>They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control. East India Company begs to differ.

red75prime 7y ago

What about states then? Major ones are kept in check by a threat of mutually assured destruction. Such tactic will not work in quite the same way for AGI.

dang 7y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062708.