> You're arguing for giving personhood to software right now

I'm not sure anyone in the thread is actually arguing that. I think what they are saying is that we should look at what behaviour is considered acceptable for humans in order to help us decide what behaviour is acceptable for the tools humans use.

My first reply was rebutting that kind of equivalence, then the reply to me was saying that there's no special difference between humans and software. The reply you've replied to is me saying that's crazy.

But all that stuff about "software can't marry" etc doesn't change the point that we need to make decisions about what behaviour is acceptable for software, and it makes sense to base those decisions on what is already considered acceptable by the humans using the software. I just don't see how personhood comes into it and I feel like that's a hyperbolic interpretation of what they're saying.

The article is about people (as a corporate legal entity) being sued for things people did when creating something. ChatGPT, the software, is not being sued. It can't be sued. It's software. It's not a person that can be taken to court. It can't be held liable.

(I heavily edited this comment after realizing I could make the point in far fewer words. Sorry.)

I still think you're getting too far into the weeds here. If we decide that a certain kind of usage of software shouldn't be considered acceptable, then we could sue the user who used it, or the developers who created it, or something. I don't see why software personhood is the only resolution here.

> I don't see why software personhood is the only resolution here.

It's not. That was the point of my replies. That it's time to assert software personhood is crazy.

> If we decide that a certain kind of usage of software shouldn't be considered acceptable, then we could sue the user who used it, or the developers who created it, or something.

We can already do that. That's what this article is about. The people are being sued. That's what all of my replies are about. I don't understand why you are replying to my comment with a re-summary of my comments as if it's a rebuttal to them.

But I don't think anyone here is asserting that. I'm not sure how to make my point any differently so that you see what I mean. I simply don't think that basing our judgement about what's acceptable for software around what's acceptable for humans necessarily implies anything about software personhood like you are saying it does. We don't need to be able to sue a piece of software in order to make judgements about what kinds of software behaviours are acceptable.

> I simply don't think that basing our judgement about what's acceptable for software around what's acceptable for humans necessarily implies anything about software personhood like you are saying it does.

It doesn't. And all of my comments are about that. Like I just said in the previous reply. You're replying to my comment where I also just said this. Please stop replying to me saying that I'm saying that.

The article is about people (well, companies) being sued. Not about software being sued. Software can't be sued.

Whether or not there are additional laws written about what's acceptable behavior for software (whatever that means? It's assuming software can make decisions) is irrelevant. You can't sue software. People are being sued because the plaintiffs think that people broke people laws and are liable for damages. Software can't break laws and can't be held liable.

I'm having to reword this over and over because you keep replying to me. I think you might be replying to me repeatedly just to have the last word.

If we give personhood to software, wouldn't it mean that you cannot shutdown or delete it ever? You cannot destroy the equipment it is on? As clearly that would be murder.

What would be your financial responsibility to keep AI running?

These are famously the types of questions surfaced in countless sci-fi books. And as long as humans don’t destroy themselves first, it is likely that we will have to address them eventually. In most stories it generally happens too late after some terrible war/conflict, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to tackle them proactively. And then maybe it’s not so weird to think about these concepts even if their realization isn’t imminent. Working backwards in such a framework would probably give much better laws for today.

Corporate personhood is a thing in the US, and you are allowed to shutdown your company just fine.

This has nothing to do with personhood of software. Restricting the freedom of human beings, which includes the ones that run companies, based on the tool they choose to use, without the basis of obvious direct harm, is questionable. The fact that AI can operate autonomously is a side tangent; they are created by humans and, so far, their only proximal purpose is to serve humans.

> Yes. It's an object or writing. Not a person. You're arguing for giving personhood to software right now and that's crazy.

No, arguing that a human using an artificial brain instead of their own biological brain for learning and derivative creation is an implementation detail of little relevance, and dismissing personhood related arguments like "software can't marry" has nothing to do with arguing for the personhood of software. Explain how one leads to the other, because I'm not seeing it, and that's not at all what I was attempting to communicate.

You're saying that the software itself should be held liable, instead of the people that created it. Meaning that the software would need legal status as a person (or equivalent) so that it can be taken to court, instead of the people that created it.

There is a possibility that you're not saying that, but it's the only interpretation of your comment I could come up with. Because your comment consists entirely of comparisons of software to human brains about whether or not something should be considered legal, and this only makes sense if the software itself can be held liable.

> You're saying that the software itself should be held liable, instead of the people that created it.

Respectfully, I don't know how you're interpreting it that way. Until we demonstrate that the current generation of AI is genuinely intelligent, instead of clever algorithms, a piece of software is no more or less liable than an individual firearm is after it's been fired at someone. My observation is that your argument appears to be that there is something special about humans learning and creating derivative works from that learning over humans using a tool that does the learning and create derivative works.

> There is a possibility that you're not saying that, but it's the only interpretation of your comment I could come up with.

That's fair. I just don't get it.

> Because your comment consists entirely of comparisons of software to human brains about whether or not something should be considered legal, and this only makes sense if the software itself can be held liable.

Human brains and software are both tools. The question I'm invoking is what is it about a person doing the learning and the derivative creation that's different from a person (since, as you say, software itself has no personhood) using an artificial brain to learn and perform derivative creation.

I think the disconnect here may be that I'm operating from the assumption that of course there are human beings liable for the software, but your interpretation of what I'm saying is that software in a vacuum should effectively have personhood applied to it. These are two different things. I'm referring to both humans/brains and software as the interchangeable variable in the question of why the choice of tool means applying entirely different legal principles.

Sorry if I wasn't clear or still am not being clear here. I wanted to make sure I was being understood correctly, but if all we can do from here is agree to disagree, that's fine, and I'd offer to just shake hands.

The way your comment was phrased made it seem, to me, like you were rebutting what I was saying and that regular human things are all irrelevant for whether or not something is a person.

There is one other way I have figured out to read your comment. Which is that it doesn't matter how software or a brain functions since it's only the action of the outcome that matters. But this is not really a relevant statement regardless of whether or not you agree with it, because the article is about a lawsuit and liability. A group of people, acting as a company, is suing other groups of people as companies. And software is not a person, and can't be held liable. So for that to be the case, the software would need to be made into a person, or equivalent. The fact that software and brains are or are not similar is irrelevant, because software is not a person and cannot be held liable.