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We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

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71–80 of 122 posts

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#71
post #66

I would only start to entertain this when we had AI running for reasonably long period say a year with same full context. That is in same run over a year it had collected information. In singular session. No point even considering it if it can't run for extended periods. And actually keeping learning during the duration. As surely person should stay alive for decades if allowed.

But you could still prompt it to act like any person, including fictional and deceased ones, which proves it has no real concept of self. It's just a language model for humans to generate whatever text meets the task. You could have it run for a year as different perspectives in GRR Martin's ASOIAF to finish his books for him. And then what, award it with Jon Snow's personhood?

An AI agent would need some kind of stable personality of it's own. Some sense of self outside whatever the hell people task it with for this to be meaningful. Data from Star Trek is a good fictional benchmark for that. Or Voyager's Holographic doctor.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#73
post #54

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.

I would not be shocked if tech bros were behind the idea in the first place.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#74
post #66

I would only start to entertain this when we had AI running for reasonably long period say a year with same full context. That is in same run over a year it had collected information. In singular session. No point even considering it if it can't run for extended periods. And actually keeping learning during the duration. As surely person should stay alive for decades if allowed.

An LLM that could mutate its own weights might be closer to it. The various labs must have experimented with this, but it seems that it would be economically prohibitive to productize.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLCs were invented precisely to go around that in most cases

Not for the most important things, like murdering people, fraud, etc. Executives are prosecuted for these kinds of things and the mere fact that it can happen shapes their behavior. An AI cannot be punished at all. So they will not behave with that in mind.

I am sick of this 'just so' logic. I could equally argue that AIs are not driven by greed, sexual appetites, revenge, etc., making them considerably more trustworthy than wealthy sociopaths.

It's already noteworthy when a very wealthy or politically powerful person is abruptly disempowered, even more so when they end up losing their personal liberty or life. I put it to you that's it's noteworthy because it is such a rare event, even though there are a lot of very well-reourced sociopaths.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#76

If I smooshed a gun and an AI agent together and it happened to shoot someone, who would be responsible? Are we going to go back to the medieval times of animal trials and taking inanimate objects to court?

We had many precedents with dog as autonomous agent, and lack of responsibility from their owners. If your gun kills random people, while they walk on public street... It was their fault for "provoking" and triggering the gun. Gun was just being "reactive" and defending your house!

Guns don't kill people, people do. Wait wrong analogy, I'll try again. There are no bad guns, just bad gun owners. But these types of guns were bred and trained over generations to be killers! You can't just call it an assault dog just because it looks scary. Can you even define that term?

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we ban AI for cheating but let human cheating go unchecked how does that solve the problem of cheating? And I'm 100% sure managers are right now using AI to make decisions, or even cheat, IBM training manual wisdom not withstanding.

> let human cheating go unchecked Nobody is suggesting to do that.

Sure they are, we just call it 'slashing red tape.'

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#78
post #66

I would only start to entertain this when we had AI running for reasonably long period say a year with same full context. That is in same run over a year it had collected information. In singular session. No point even considering it if it can't run for extended periods. And actually keeping learning during the duration. As surely person should stay alive for decades if allowed.

But you could still prompt it to act like any person, including fictional and deceased ones, which proves it has no real concept of self. It's just a language model for humans to generate whatever text meets the task. You could have it run for a year as different perspectives in GRR Martin's ASOIAF to finish his books for him. And then what, award it with Jon Snow's personhood? An AI agent would need some kind of sta…

Actually I see little problem with first part. If you initially prompt it to have certain personality based on some other personality even fictional one that is fine.

I agree on the stability though. My point is that for personhood to start to make any sense it needs to operate that personhood continuously as well ending it would be ending a personhood. Which could be a murder...

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#79

Earlier 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.

The corporation that owns the AI could be punished. This isn't more complicated than any other product liability situation, IMO.

> The corporation that owns the AI could be punished. This isn't more complicated than any other product liability situation, IMO

The issue is if the corporation is owned and run by an AI. Since the AI cannot really be punished if the company does some harm, unlike if the corporation was run by humans who can be punished.

Re: We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

#80
post #60

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.

I see no reason to seriously consider that current AI is in any way conscious. It's fun as thought experiment people like to play with. The technology is not some black box, it was designed by humans who understand it well enough to keep building and improving it.
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