Well, we did it for politicians. Can't get any worse.
We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
41–50 of 122 posts
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
But will the courts see it that way. We already see that it is difficult to hold any human in Waymo responsible when their cars fail to obey traffic regulations.
I live in a rural area and have only seen a Waymo a few times when travelling for work. Does Waymo require the user to have a driver's license? If they did, and get agreement of responsibility, that's one thing, but generally if not wouldn't it be Waymo's responsibility for bad programming or broken devices?
They don’t need a license and you are not supposed to touch the controls, so I don’t really see how you would be responsible. Waymos do seem to break traffic laws every once in a while, and I always wonder if mine will get pulled over and what will happen there.
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
"A corporation cannot" didn't stop legal birth of those
> "A corporation cannot" didn't stop legal birth of those In a corporation, the humans running it can be punished. An AI cannot be punished.
The corporation that owns the AI could be punished. This isn't more complicated than any other product liability situation, IMO.
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#44Why not? We give full pershood to corporations. Those are also legal fictions.
If you’re referring to citizens united then that does not grant full personhood to corporations. It just protects free speech from corporations because it views the speech as coming from the individual persons that form up the corporation. This is a very narrow application of rights applied to corporations. But in general corporations are not granted personhood.
> It just protects free speech from corporations
That description is a disservice. The real impact of it is that it equates money with speech for politics.
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "A corporation cannot" didn't stop legal birth of those In a corporation, the humans running it can be punished. An AI cannot be punished.
LLCs were invented precisely to go around that in most cases
LLCs were invented to provide a layer of separation between business assets and the personal assets of the owner or owners. An LLC is a civil construct, it offers no protection from responsibility for criminal behavior.
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#46Why not? We give full pershood to corporations. Those are also legal fictions.
Do we? Not where I live. Corporations cannot vote, etc. The US is an outlier in granting more rights to corporations than other countries.
The U.S. isn’t an outlier in granting “more rights to corporations than other countries.” We just have less restrictive speech laws across the board. Countries that impose limits on speech through corporations also have much stronger limits on speech by individuals.
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
But will the courts see it that way. We already see that it is difficult to hold any human in Waymo responsible when their cars fail to obey traffic regulations.
I live in a rural area and have only seen a Waymo a few times when travelling for work. Does Waymo require the user to have a driver's license? If they did, and get agreement of responsibility, that's one thing, but generally if not wouldn't it be Waymo's responsibility for bad programming or broken devices?
It doesn't look like that's a requirement: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9197501
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#48Why not? We give full pershood to corporations. Those are also legal fictions.
Do we? Not where I live. Corporations cannot vote, etc. The US is an outlier in granting more rights to corporations than other countries.
"personhood" doesn't require voting rights. Babies have personhood even if they cannot vote.
Personhood can be applied to "natural persons", like people, and "judicial persons", like companies.
Personhood can also be applied to, for example, rivers.
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#49Why not? We give full pershood to corporations. Those are also legal fictions.
If you’re referring to citizens united then that does not grant full personhood to corporations. It just protects free speech from corporations because it views the speech as coming from the individual persons that form up the corporation. This is a very narrow application of rights applied to corporations. But in general corporations are not granted personhood.
I have bad news. Corporate personhood goes back much farther than Citizens United. We're talking the 1880s. Specifically, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886)[1] which has been understood to affirm the protection of corporations under the Fourteenth Amendment[2].
The fourteenth amendment, as you recall, ends section 1 with "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Emphasis mine.
Two years later, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Johnson Field, in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania (1888)[3] we find the definitive statement:
> The inhibition of the amendment that no state shall deprive any person within its jurisdiction of the equal protection of the laws was designed to prevent any person or class of persons from being singled out as a special subject for discriminating and hostile legislation. Under the designation of "person" there is no doubt that a private corporation is included.
While this doesn't necessarily means corporations have every legal protection natural persons do, the US has a long history of legal protection that corporations benefit from that we call personhood.
1. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886)
2. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
3. Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181, 188-189 (1888)
Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re referring to citizens united then that does not grant full personhood to corporations. It just protects free speech from corporations because it views the speech as coming from the individual persons that form up the corporation. This is a very narrow application of rights applied to corporations. But in general corporations are not granted personhood.
> It just protects free speech from corporations That description is a disservice. The real impact of it is that it equates money with speech for politics.
One only needs to read Stevens' dissent in hindsight to recognize that all of his concerns were and are legitimate, and the worst of which have come to pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC#Dissent...