wedrifid comments on Singularity Institute now accepts donations via Bitcoin - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Kevin 28 February 2011 04:03PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 07 March 2011 11:04:50AM *  4 points [-]

but it certainly doesn't qualify as one from a legal point of view

I'm not nearly so confident. The Powers That Be don't need to be all that reasonable about these things. Because of the bit about the Power.

I expect a security oriented government body would be able to come up with as many ways for creating a superintelligence to be illegal as MoR!Harry could find ways to weaponise Hufflepuffs. Calling it a WoMD would just be one of them.

Comment author: katydee 07 March 2011 04:54:33PM 3 points [-]

It's conceivable that, at some point, building design frameworks for friendly artificial intelligences (or, more plausibly, artificial intelligences in general) might be made illegal, but it certainly isn't illegal now.

Comment author: handoflixue 06 May 2011 06:16:17PM *  2 points [-]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service

Legality really doesn't seem to be a huge factor in whether the Secret Service can inconvenience you. And if they raided a gaming company, I could see them plausibly raiding an AI development organization.

That said, I don't see anything to suggest it's particularly likely, but a government investigation, all by itself, is incredibly disruptive even if you don't end up guilty of any crimes.

Edit: Fixed from FBI to Secret Service.