What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#2In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn funds, open bank accounts, start VPS accounts, etc, and bombard lots of innocent people with illicit goods before any court would entertain the idea that no human was responsible.
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#3In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn f…
How could an independent bot (legitamately) earn bitcoins? A cheap vps to live on would be $5/mo, so it wouldn't take that much. It would need to provide some sort of service that doesn't require human intervention, and is worth paying for.
Darknet markets take bitcoin, and at least some VPS providers do as well, so no need to get "real" bank accounts and evade know-your-customer.
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#4In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn f…
I've often thought about how long until an entire system can be automated to the point where zero humans are involved - not in the running, maintenance, making money to hire the servers to run it...how would the law deal with such a system? How would society?
The closest analogy I can think of is legal trusts, that have a stated purpose with little room for interpretation, but still has a human performing the operations.
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#5In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn f…
This is very interesting, but of course who (aside from art students) would want to do this? If you make a piece of autonomous software (a bot) that can earn its own money, why let it keep it, spend it, and live its own weird little bot life?
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#6In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn f…
How could an independent bot (legitamately) earn bitcoins? A cheap vps to live on would be $5/mo, so it wouldn't take that much. It would need to provide some sort of service that doesn't require human intervention, and is worth paying for. Darknet markets take bitcoin, and at least some VPS providers do as well, so no need to get "real" bank accounts and evade know-your-customer.
What if I were to gift it capital and have it simply collect interest/dividends from the exploitation of said capital (either via loaning it out with an algorithm or by building a profitable business with it)?
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
How could an independent bot (legitamately) earn bitcoins? A cheap vps to live on would be $5/mo, so it wouldn't take that much. It would need to provide some sort of service that doesn't require human intervention, and is worth paying for. Darknet markets take bitcoin, and at least some VPS providers do as well, so no need to get "real" bank accounts and evade know-your-customer.
What if I were to gift it capital and have it simply collect interest/dividends from the exploitation of said capital (either via loaning it out with an algorithm or by building a profitable business with it)?
Yeah, but how do you exploit that capital without interacting with the human-only financial/employment systems?
You can hire humans for things over informal channels with no intermediary, but what do you do for reputation/accountability when said humans need to keep low enough volume to not interest the tax authorities?
I guess algorithmic trading on decentralized/anonymous bitcoin markets is one way to have no humans, if you can get the volatility low enough.
How do you exploit capital with (almost) no human involvement?
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#8In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn f…
I've often thought about how long until an entire system can be automated to the point where zero humans are involved - not in the running, maintenance, making money to hire the servers to run it...how would the law deal with such a system? How would society? The closest analogy I can think of is legal trusts, that have a stated purpose with little room for interpretation, but still has a human performing the operati…
How do we find out, if not by building such a system? :)
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#9In the US, I suspect a prosecutor would successfully gain a conviction against the bot's operator. This verdict would be repeated several times over a dozen years before any judge or jury ever tried to see it another way. And, IMHO, the only other way this could possibly result in anything other than trouble for the operator is if these bots were not only self-replicating, but also self-funding. They'd have to earn f…
This is very interesting, but of course who (aside from art students) would want to do this? If you make a piece of autonomous software (a bot) that can earn its own money, why let it keep it, spend it, and live its own weird little bot life?
To make a point. Let's be honest, the money probably wouldn't be life changing, but establishing a precedent in matters like these actually could be.
Re: What happens when a software bot goes on a darknet shopping spree?
#10I find the legal culpability of this fascinating.
Right now it is an extremely concrete example, and really easy to say that the originator of the bot is at blame and should be prosecuted for buying illegal items.
But, how advanced does a bot have to be before it itself is at blame? What if they'd programmed it to reach out and purchase from any vendor it could find? What if it wasn't programmed to do anything but made random acts, took feedback and then learned from it?