4 ms·

Humans have often gotten personhood wrong. In the USA, corporations enjoy human rights and as we’ve seen since 2008, are not allowed to die. I think there’s a

Humans have often gotten personhood wrong. In the USA, corporations enjoy human rights and as we’ve seen since 2008, are not allowed to die. I think there’s a legal possibility that a corporation running semi-automously will be able to persuade a judge that it has as much a right to existence and livelihood as, say, the human victims of a chemical spill. Especially if the AI participated in legal theory and especially if the judge is a political appointee picking up some dog whistles. Shutting down such a system at that point must at least involve law enforcement.

brightlancer 4y ago
> In the USA, corporations enjoy human rights They enjoy most civil rights in the US, not human rights, and this is by design in every country I can think of. A "corporation" is, by design, a legal person. > and as we’ve seen since 2008, are not allowed to die. Corporations "die" all the time. Even large corporations "die" frequently - usually by whole acquisition, but sometimes by piecemeal acquisition in bankruptcy. 2008 demonstrated to the masses that some corporations are Too Big Too Fail, but that was also true of the corporate officers who were supposed to be legally responsible for unlawful behavior of the corporation: even when the officers knew what they were doing was unlawful, almost none were prosecuted, because the officers themselves were Too Big To Fail.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  And in the corporate equivalent of a malignant tumor, a leveraged buyout can suck all of a company’s resources before destroying it in bankruptcy. See: Toys R Us. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-equity-to-take-care-of-your-dog/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-eq...
  - smsm42 4y ago
    The governmental strategy of cheap overbundant credit means that it is a profitable strategy to borrow a ton of money, but an asset, loot it and then declare a bankruptcy. This would be detrimental for a company if the credit was tight and expensive, because nobody would give them money again or if they do, the costs would be so high that the loot wouldn't be worth the effort. But since the credit is made cheap and virtually infinitely abundant, if somebody doesn't give them the credit, somebody else will.
smsm42 4y ago
I think you confusing some very different things. It is not correct to say "corporations enjoy human rights" - people, when using corporations, enjoy human rights. Corporations is just a model that makes it easier to talk about people and certain interactions between them, but ultimately it is based on the same concept of human rights and derives from it, not from some weird concept that corporations are separate sentient entities. And of course corporations are allowed to cease to exist, that happened many times since 2008. Some corporations may occasionally enjoy government support if there's a danger they'd cease to exist in a manner that the government considers to be detrimental to the society, but it's very different from generally declaring no corporation is ever allowed to stop existing - that's just not something that happens. > I think there’s a legal possibility that a corporation running semi-automously will be able to persuade a judge I'm not sure what you mean "corporation running semi-automously". Somebody - a lawyer - would have to argue the case. Somebody would have to hire that lawyer. Somebody would have to approve the budget for hiring that lawyer. Somebody would have to sell the burgers that would bring in the money that then would go to paying that lawyer. Even if you replaced "human lawyer" with "extremely advanced script that produces legal arguments", somebody would still have to run that script and tell it which arguments it needs to produce. > will be able to persuade a judge that it has as much a right to existence and livelihood I see it as a very baseless claim, unless you are using a lot of tortured logic to imply that judges not destroying corporations (on which btw livelihoods of thousands of actual people often depend) left and right without proper consideration is the same as recognizing their "rights to existance" and making them a person. That's not true. Just like the judge probably would not decide to destroy your house just because you painted you fence wrong or didn't remove your garbage bin in time, it doesn't mean the judge thinks the hose is a person. > if the judge is a political appointee picking up some dog whistles. If the judge is a political hack - which unfortunately does happen - then it has nothing to do with AI or personhood, we have had political hackery for centuries before we even started to use electricity.

brightlancer 4y ago

> In the USA, corporations enjoy human rights They enjoy most civil rights in the US, not human rights, and this is by design in every country I can think of. A "corporation" is, by design, a legal person. > and as we’ve seen since 2008, are not allowed to die. Corporations "die" all the time. Even large corporations "die" frequently - usually by whole acquisition, but sometimes by piecemeal acquisition in bankruptcy. 2008 demonstrated to the masses that some corporations are Too Big Too Fail, but that was also true of the corporate officers who were supposed to be legally responsible for unlawful behavior of the corporation: even when the officers knew what they were doing was unlawful, almost none were prosecuted, because the officers themselves were Too Big To Fail.

janalsncm 4y ago
And in the corporate equivalent of a malignant tumor, a leveraged buyout can suck all of a company’s resources before destroying it in bankruptcy. See: Toys R Us. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-equity-to-take-care-of-your-dog/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-eq...
- smsm42 4y ago
  The governmental strategy of cheap overbundant credit means that it is a profitable strategy to borrow a ton of money, but an asset, loot it and then declare a bankruptcy. This would be detrimental for a company if the credit was tight and expensive, because nobody would give them money again or if they do, the costs would be so high that the loot wouldn't be worth the effort. But since the credit is made cheap and virtually infinitely abundant, if somebody doesn't give them the credit, somebody else will.

smsm42 4y ago

I think you confusing some very different things. It is not correct to say "corporations enjoy human rights" - people, when using corporations, enjoy human rights. Corporations is just a model that makes it easier to talk about people and certain interactions between them, but ultimately it is based on the same concept of human rights and derives from it, not from some weird concept that corporations are separate sentient entities. And of course corporations are allowed to cease to exist, that happened many times since 2008. Some corporations may occasionally enjoy government support if there's a danger they'd cease to exist in a manner that the government considers to be detrimental to the society, but it's very different from generally declaring no corporation is ever allowed to stop existing - that's just not something that happens. > I think there’s a legal possibility that a corporation running semi-automously will be able to persuade a judge I'm not sure what you mean "corporation running semi-automously". Somebody - a lawyer - would have to argue the case. Somebody would have to hire that lawyer. Somebody would have to approve the budget for hiring that lawyer. Somebody would have to sell the burgers that would bring in the money that then would go to paying that lawyer. Even if you replaced "human lawyer" with "extremely advanced script that produces legal arguments", somebody would still have to run that script and tell it which arguments it needs to produce. > will be able to persuade a judge that it has as much a right to existence and livelihood I see it as a very baseless claim, unless you are using a lot of tortured logic to imply that judges not destroying corporations (on which btw livelihoods of thousands of actual people often depend) left and right without proper consideration is the same as recognizing their "rights to existance" and making them a person. That's not true. Just like the judge probably would not decide to destroy your house just because you painted you fence wrong or didn't remove your garbage bin in time, it doesn't mean the judge thinks the hose is a person. > if the judge is a political appointee picking up some dog whistles. If the judge is a political hack - which unfortunately does happen - then it has nothing to do with AI or personhood, we have had political hackery for centuries before we even started to use electricity.