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Comment by hrehhf | Hacker News Reader

> a machine cannot own property, only a person can.

This is just not correct. There is the concept of a "trust" where property is not fully owned by any group of individuals, but rather is owned by a legal entity for the benefit of some person or some other legal entity. It is not uncommon for a wealthy person to create a trust to which they give their assets, which will be managed in perpetuity for the benefit of that person's heirs. Just as a trust can own stocks and give the dividends to the beneficiaries of the trust, a trust could wholly-own a company, which in turn owns machines and other property.

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Only legal persons can own property. A trust is not a legal person. The legal situation is that a trust's assets belong to the trustee, who must be a person, not the trust itself. A trustee could be a corporation, but it could not be a machine, since a machine is not a legal person.

The trustee is legally responsible for employing the trust's assets in accordance with the terms of the trust. The relevance of this is that the actions of a machine owned by a trust would be the legal responsibility of the trustee.

You can't really say that a machine truly owns something until the machine, and not its owners or operators, can be held legally responsible for what it does with it.

And why can't it be held responsible? Presumably, it would have assets that could be seized. Further, as it approaches Strong AI, it might even react to 'deterrence' in the the same way that other 'persons' do.

It can't be held legally responsible because it isn't a legal person. It wouldn't have assets, its owner would have assets.

I consider it doubtful that a court would rule that an AI was a person. Natural persons are persons because they are. Legal persons are persons because it benefits society for groups of persons to act together and not be held individually responsible for what they do - with the proviso that the corporate veil may be pierced if the persons protected by it act with malfeasance.

Allowing a person who can determine the behaviour of an AI in every situation to be protected from the consequences of the AI's behaviour would likely not benefit society.

You might say that an AI whose behaviour is so complex as to preclude a mere human being able to control it is a different matter, but even now if I own a machine that I cannot control and it injures somebody, I would still be held liable despite lacking intent to harm.

And even though a sufficiently sophisticated AI will react to deterrents, so does a dog, and dogs are not legal persons.

Do you see the circularity in your reasoning? A machine can't be held responsible because it's not a legal person..and it's not a legal person because it can't be held responsible.

You also claim that some legal persons are persons simply because society benefits from allowing groups of persons to act as one. If this is the threshold for personhood - society benefits - then I am confused why this threshold would not also extend personhood to machines.

I guess I'm looking for a clear bright line for defining personhood that includes humans, rivers, and corporations while excluding machines, and I'm not seeing it.

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