5 ms·
I’d actually turn both this and the original article around, and say that corporations behave like AIs. They are artificial. They are (variably) intelligent. T
by madaxe_again 7y ago
I’d actually turn both this and the original article around, and say that corporations behave like AIs. They are artificial. They are (variably) intelligent.
The functions of processing inputs to create meaningful outputs are carried out by neurons made of meat (human employees) and of silicon. These processes are governed by rules and metaprocesses, which the entity continuously optimises and improves, in order to further its own growth and to improve its fitness for its purpose - typically, enhancing shareholder value. I cannot think of a single criteria for intelligence or even life that a corporation does not possess, from independent action to stimulus response to reproduction to consumption to predation.
I think the first true hard AI will emerge accidentally, and it will be a corporation that has largely optimised humans out of the loop - but even with humans as a component of a system, a gestalt, an artificial supra-intelligence, can still emerge.
This also neatly sidesteps the whole question of “should AIs have rights?”, as corporations are already legally persons.
- qznc 7y agoI agree: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html It leads to an interesting question: Is a corporation controlled by its CEO?
- madaxe_again 7y agoNice - that overlaps pretty much perfectly with my reasoning! In my view, no. The CEO is at best a race condition breaking function, at worst, a parasitic infection. If corporations are self-optimising AIs, then they will optimise CEOs out of existence if they aren’t conducive to fitness.
- Joking_Phantom 7y agoDoes that not suggest that CEOs are worth their cost to the vast majority of companies that retain them? What companies operate without a de facto CEO?
- killjoywashere 7y agoWell, CEOs may be inherited from non-optimal initial conditions of early ancestors and simply haven't been replaced by a better competitor yet. Or they have been and we don't understand that yet. Naturally occurring genomes encode for processes that result in all sorts of things that don't actually have to occur. The appendix, the frenulum, most of the DNA itself, as far as we can tell. Nature's full of random dead-ends that keep propagating because the system hasn't gotten over the barrier of the next local minimum yet.
- red75prime 7y agoChicken can run faster if it had optimized its head away. Because it can ignore limiting factors like potential obstacles in its current course. But for how long? Actual problem solving in a corporation is done by humans. Corporation policy can provide a set of incentives to align goals of its employees with the goal of the corporation and a structure to more or less effectively combine specialists' efforts. But someone had to think about the corporation as a whole and change its policies if the need arises. Cephalization is a known evolutionary trend after all.
- frandroid 7y agoCEOs are controlled by their context, i.e. owners and regulations (for publicly-traded companies) which drive the profit-motive, and then have agency to take various actions to achieve this goal.
- vkaku 7y agoI have a strong feeling that if we went on like that and one day there will be an AI which will optimize you out - "Humans do not add much value to things, they are just cost centres."
- perl4ever 7y agoHumans add all the value and always will, because that's what value is - what humans want. If an AI has some goal independent of humans, it's no different from a car rolling downhill because the parking brake failed.
- AgentME 7y agoSure, but good luck convincing an AI that after it has power. It's important to build the AI to think that way from the start if it is capable of getting power over us.
- falcor84 7y agoReminds me of this great SMBC comic -https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03 We need to be careful of this kind of utility optimization, even when it readers to humans.
- perl4ever 7y agoIt's been a long time since I took a course in philosophy, and all I recalled was John Stuart Mill being associated with utilitarianism. Looking at his Wikipedia page, it appears that his idea of the utility associated with pleasure was independent of the specific person. If X is the amount of pleasure humanity gets from something, and Y is the number of people that exist, then the pleasure an individual is assumed to get is X/Y. If I understand correctly. If someone were to abuse the concept of utility by considering it to differ between people, it seems to me a lot more likely that they would say something like "I get a unit of utility from this candy bar, but many other people do/would not, so I don't need to share with them", rather than "I get millions of units of utility from this candy bar and others only get a normal amount".