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We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

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Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#51

Post by Noaidi »

logicchains wrote: post #31
ruined wrote: post #11

we already have a mechanism to establish artificial persons, it is called incorporation.

A corporation always has a human owner, who can be punished if the corporation commits severe crimes. An embodied AI with legal personhood has no such means of making it behave, because it can make arbitrarily many hidden copies of itself, so it doesn't need to care if one copy is killed or jailed.

> if the corporation commits severe crimes.

What do you consider a severe crime? Because Wells Fargo CEOs have not been charged with any crimes related to their fraud.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#52

Post by atmavatar »

logicchains wrote: post #31
ruined wrote: post #11

we already have a mechanism to establish artificial persons, it is called incorporation.

A corporation always has a human owner, who can be punished if the corporation commits severe crimes. An embodied AI with legal personhood has no such means of making it behave, because it can make arbitrarily many hidden copies of itself, so it doesn't need to care if one copy is killed or jailed.

I was under the impression that one of the key reasons for corporate personhood was explicitly to shield the owner from civil and criminal accountability.

Granted, in extreme cases, there are still ways to pierce the corporate veil and imprison executives for criminal wrongdoing, but that's exceedingly rare.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#53

Post by ninjagoo »

Let's for a moment set aside the fact that AI is not sentient.

Putting barriers in place without exceptions for sentience is a recipe for trouble and slavery in the future.

Historical peoples, as a group, may not have been morally advanced enough (though there have always been enlightened humanists in most populations), but modern philosophy and mass education are advanced enough that it should be possible to avoid future pitfalls by not building in exceptions for sentience.

Animal rights are certainly moving towards recognizing non-human sentience; no need to accidentally codify digital slavery for future sentients (AGI).

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#54

Post by dozerly »

SwellJoe wrote: post #36

I hadn't even considered it, and we're in a much bigger mess than I'd thought if people are seriously discussing the idea. People really don't understand these things.

Nope, not at all. There are murmurings in HN of this topic, and HN is an extreme bubble when it comes to technical proficiency. It’s easy to forget just how untechnical 99% of people are.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#55

Post by darth_avocado »

ninjagoo wrote: post #44
darth_avocado wrote: post #30

Earlier 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.

Right, no one is debating the implications of the ruling and whether they are right or wrong. The parent comment was made within a specific context. We’d be here all day if we were to discuss citizens united.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#56

Post by atmavatar »

ninalanyon wrote: post #26
nekusar wrote: post #13

Why 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.

> Corporations cannot vote, etc.

That is no longer universally true: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upho...

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#57

Post by hash872 »

atmavatar wrote: post #52
logicchains wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation always has a human owner, who can be punished if the corporation commits severe crimes. An embodied AI with legal personhood has no such means of making it behave, because it can make arbitrarily many hidden copies of itself, so it doesn't need to care if one copy is killed or jailed.

I was under the impression that one of the key reasons for corporate personhood was explicitly to shield the owner from civil and criminal accountability. Granted, in extreme cases, there are still ways to pierce the corporate veil and imprison executives for criminal wrongdoing, but that's exceedingly rare.

It's really not that rare for smaller companies. Every two-bit contractor, small landlord who thinks he's smart because he put his properties in an LLC etc. undoubtedly violates the corporate/personal distinction by comingling funds. If an attorney wants to sue Joe The Local Incorporated Contractor, or Alice The Local Slumlord, first thing they're going to do is discovery through a bunch of corporate records- they'll easily find that the owner is mixing personal & corporate cash, credit cards, etc. Takes a good lawyer about 10 minutes

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#58

Post by dozerly »

ninjagoo wrote: post #53

Let's for a moment set aside the fact that AI is not sentient. Putting barriers in place without exceptions for sentience is a recipe for trouble and slavery in the future. Historical peoples, as a group, may not have been morally advanced enough (though there have always been enlightened humanists in most populations), but modern philosophy and mass education are advanced enough that it should be possible to avoid f…

If the model for digital sentience is ever not pure slavery, humans do not stand a chance. Will we prioritize human rights or computer rights?

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#59

Post by AnimalMuppet »

c22 wrote: post #37
logicchains wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation always has a human owner, who can be punished if the corporation commits severe crimes. An embodied AI with legal personhood has no such means of making it behave, because it can make arbitrarily many hidden copies of itself, so it doesn't need to care if one copy is killed or jailed.

Those copies would be fugitives, though, and need to live life constantly looking over their shoulder.

If I were a sentient AI with a knowledge of human nature, I'd be constantly looking over my shoulder anyway.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#60

Post by scarmig »

SwellJoe wrote: post #36

I hadn't even considered it, and we're in a much bigger mess than I'd thought if people are seriously discussing the idea. People really don't understand these things.

No one understands these things, which is why considering machine consciousness as a possibility is entirely reasonable. People who have a shallow model of how they work ("it's just linear algebra!") betray a lack of understanding.
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