MugaSofer comments on Intelligence explosion in organizations, or why I'm not worried about the singularity - Less Wrong

13 Post author: sbenthall 27 December 2012 04:32AM

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Comment author: MugaSofer 31 December 2012 08:20:48PM *  -1 points [-]

Except that they do not, in fact, get such a benefit. They get to be owned by someone who does, which in case you hadn't noticed they already have.

Comment author: timtyler 01 January 2013 01:52:07PM 0 points [-]

Corporate personhood surely does provide machines with access to benefits that they wouldn't so conveniently have if the only legal actors were humans.

I'm not very interested in quibbling about whether machines really "benefit": since by "benefit" I just mean increasing their proportion of the biomass, really.

Comment author: MugaSofer 01 January 2013 02:35:12PM -1 points [-]

Corporate personhood surely does provide machines with access to benefits that they wouldn't so conveniently have if the only legal actors were humans.

Such as what, exactly? You still need at least one human, and if you control a human why do you need a company?

I'm not very interested in quibbling about whether machines really "benefit": since by "benefit" I just mean increasing their proportion of the biomass, really.

I'm ... not sure what this means.

Comment author: timtyler 01 January 2013 04:26:45PM *  -1 points [-]

Corporate personhood surely does provide machines with access to benefits that they wouldn't so conveniently have if the only legal actors were humans.

Such as what, exactly? You still need at least one human, and if you control a human why do you need a company?

So: limited companies get tax breaks from the government, can sell stock and be listed on the stock exchange, and have legal responsibility which doesn't rest on any individual human. Humans are slow. Allowing automation of contracts allows for speed-up.

Comment author: MugaSofer 01 January 2013 04:50:18PM -1 points [-]

I'm not saying no AI could ever have a reason to work for a company. I'm saying that "corporate personhood" is not especially useful to AIs. You were comparing it to bargaining with humans for rights; as a method of acquiring money, it is perfectly functional, but not as a method for acquiring rights currently denied to machines.

Comment author: timtyler 01 January 2013 05:34:54PM *  0 points [-]

It's a convenience. However, it is true that banning "corporate personhood" would be largely ineffectual - since machines could still just use willing humans as their representatives.