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If corporations are people, then robots are people too. Corporations pretty much only understand monetary fines, and robots will only understand some form of d
by logn 12y ago
If corporations are people, then robots are people too.
Corporations pretty much only understand monetary fines, and robots will only understand some form of disconnecting the cord.
Similarly, corporations have a corporate veil to shield their owners form liability, assuming their business finances are separated from personal. Robot designers would have limited liability assuming their personal decision making was separated from the algorithmic reasoning.
And we've managed to pass the CAN-SPAM Act, so either we should restore robot 1st Amendment rights, or otherwise overturn Citizens United.
- icebraining 12y agoIf corporations are people, then robots are people too. Corporations have legal personhood because they're an association of people. I don't see how this applies to robots. If you do, I don't want to see your robots!
- _-__--- 12y agoASSIMILATE
- logn 12y agoCorporations can be wholly owned by other corporations. And they often have an obligation to seek to maximize profits above all other concerns. How's that an association of people? They're treated as people because there was a similar conundrum as to how to apply laws to corporations. Justices decided to start applying laws as though they're people. It's the same situation Schneier is describing with robots.
- TheCraiggers 12y ago>Corporations can be wholly owned by other corporations. [...] How's that an association of people? If you follow that tread long enough, you will eventually find people running the show. You will not find robots, sentient trees, or rocks sitting around a board table.
- Retric 12y agoIt would be fairly easy to create a bot that makes random corporations. Legally I don't think there is anything that would separate them from actual corporations. Granted, their corporate officers would presumably need to be people. But, HFT demonstrates bot's can make legally binding decisions so that might be a grey area.
- icebraining 12y agoSomeone is still responsible for those bots.
- Retric 12y agoWhat if the bot creator dies before the bot makes a decision. We could even go so far as to have a cosmic ray flip one or more bits in memory that causes this to be released into the wild.
- icebraining 12y agoThen the sole shareholder of the company dies. I'm sure there's plenty of case law regarding this situation.
- Retric 12y agoSure, but shareholders are rarely responsible for a companies actions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil Anyway, my point is if bot's can create and run companies then at some point they could gain the use of corporate personhood.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 12y agoHm... now you have me wondering if I could slip a circular chain of ownership past the chambers of commerce here. I'm pretty sure you could bootstrap this: Person 'X' incorporates company 'A' and receives the shares. Company 'A' incorporates company 'B'. Company 'B' makes some money. Company 'B' buys the shares of company 'A' from person 'X'. Presto, no more people involved, just two companies owning each other. It might even be possible to have company 'A' buy the shares of company 'A' directly of the person that incorporated it, so it would own itself. You'd have to fiddle with the valuation during the transaction because you're using the company capital to do the purchase, essentially ending with a valuation (temporarily) of zero when the transaction has completed after which the company would have to create some more income to become liquid again. Tricky. Very much tempted to try this.
- icebraining 12y agoAnd they often have an obligation to seek to maximize profits above all other concerns. Only if the people who form that association demand it. There's no legal obligation - that's a common myth.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]