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Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by leetcrew on Thursday February 22, 2018 @05:11PM (#16441971)
this is a fun paradox to entertain, but irl we would probably just trace the "stack" back to the human who wrote the program that started the chain of program-writing programs and hold them liable (unless we can show intent, then charge them criminally). if you can't trace back far enough to find a human then I guess you just throw up your hands and give up, which is more or less what we do anyway when we can't attribute a malicious program to a specific person. so altogether not as novel as it seems.
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by pishpash on Thursday February 22, 2018 @05:23PM (#16442063)
What if the programs were randomly generated and selected for certain traits by the crowd of non-owners at large? Who is responsible?
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by fmblwntr on Thursday February 22, 2018 @05:37PM (#16442193)
what if i set a machine to fire a gun randomly and select it for the trait of hitting people? who is responsible?
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by gamblor956 on Thursday February 22, 2018 @07:48PM (#16443139)
That's a far easier scenario than the ones involving recursively generated AIs. You are, and would likely be charged with Murder 2 in most US jurisdictions.
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by pishpash on Thursday February 22, 2018 @07:43PM (#16443104)
Wrong analogy. I set up a blank slate. Random people on the internet start to mould it into a gun that fires on people incrementally, each step fairly innocuous. Who is responsible?
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by leetcrew on Thursday February 22, 2018 @08:54PM (#16443563)
"who is responsible?" is a philosophical question that probably has no objective answer.

"who would be held responsible?" is still pretty easy here. by default, if you own or release to the public a system that ends up hurting someone, you are liable. it doesn't matter what your intent was or whether there was any way of knowing that the bad outcome would happen. the only way you can get around this is with "safe harbor" exemptions. it's possible that your blank slate would qualify, although you would probably have to lobby for this before the fact. in that case, no one would be held responsible. otherwise, you would be paying.

Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by saltcured on Thursday February 22, 2018 @11:45PM (#16444305)
The community has a garbage tip. Due to an abundance of uraniaum, everyone starts discarding it. When the garbage tip reaches critical mass and kills everyone, who was to blame?
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by icebraining on Thursday February 22, 2018 @06:00PM (#16442376)
The person(s) who created the generator.
Re:Self-owning corporations are legally possible by s73v3r_ on Thursday February 22, 2018 @06:47PM (#16442721)
The person who sets that up.