Corporations are legal persons, but they aren't algorithms (or even concrete programs), so they don't represent algorithmic personhood.

You could make the argument that their behavior is algorithmic, at least that's a part of what HFT banks on.

Conversely, what if the corporate shareholders were primarily algorithmic traders?

> You could make the argument that their behavior is algorithmic, at least that's a part of what HFT banks on.

Human decision makers -- either individuals acting on their own behalf or humans acting as decision-makers in a corporation -- may choose to use algorithms to make decisions, and may choose to give programs that concretely instantiate algorithms minute-to-minute control of their resources. That doesn't mean that the personhood -- of the individual or corporation -- transfers to the algorithm or the concrete instance.

> Conversely, what if the corporate shareholders were primarily algorithmic traders?

Algorithmic traders are legal persons -- either corporations or individuals -- using computer programs to make and execute trading decisions.

Corporations aren't persons, they're legal constructs. And no, a person is not a legal construct.

Within the USA, legally speaking, corporations are treated as people:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

With some limits, I bet. Can you jail a corporation? In many cases law enforcement is based on the ability of the state to limit personal freedom, through the use of force if needed. I wonder who'll be responsible if a self driven car kills somebody. Obviously not the passenger, especially if Google gets this "no controls" policy passed. But Google and the other car makers won't sell any of those cars if some of their people has to spend jail time for any major accident that sooner or later will inevitably happen. A possibility is that it will be legislated to be similar to what happens when a bridge collapses and kills somebody. An investigation and the engineers will go on trial. But that's strikingly different from what happens to human drivers.

(BTW, who's going to pay speed fines? They shouldn't happen but I'm sure they will)

The whole point of corporations is juridical personhood -- that's not a US quirk.

Sure, but the US is especially bonkers with regard to the rights that person has.

Apparently corporations can have religious beliefs in the US.

My understanding has it that this is a disingenuous misconstrual of what happened in the Hobby Lobby case. It's not that the corporation has religious beliefs. It's that the owners do - where that set of owners is sufficiently small and sufficiently homogeneous that that's reasonably well defined. And that those beliefs don't lose protection just because they are acting through their corporation instead of acting as an individual.

I have, at least, misgivings about the ultimate decision - and certainly disagree with the religious beliefs claimed by the owners of Hobby Lobby - but I think we should deal with the actual arguments.