HACKER Q&A
📣 nefitty

Could an AI be the sole proprietor of a company?


I imagine a situation where I anonymously create a bot that is able to maintain and run a successful business (current tech notwithstanding). In the course of its activities it begins to accumulate wealth, in the form of cryptocurrency, to avoid traditional non-human exclusionary banking routes. Assume nobody could trace it back to me and it was extremely persistent (decentralized botnet-type of agent).

Would the government outlaw engaging in business with the AI? If the AI was creating and accumulating real wealth that contributed to the economy, might the government instead adapt to this new type of entity? Could it lead to automaton rights, ie allowing them to own property and engage in contracts?

I see the clichéd grey goo/paperclip maximizer scenario, but that one is a little less interesting. More interesting problems would be things like whether humans could act in concert to change the AI's incentives on the fly. If an agent is disembodied, then that precludes the use of the "monopoly of force" by governments. Cryptocurrency also makes asset seizure difficult if not unfeasible. Would competing "regulatory" AI's need to be unleashed?

My post was sparked by the rumours that dang is an AI. He denies it.


  👤 eristic Accepted Answer ✓
Love the sci-fi take on an AI owning a company and having complete control over it. So fun to think of an entity that provides for itself completely (paying electricity bills, vendors to replace it's components, etc.) and stays alive eternally as long as it can stay in business.

Unfortunately, it probably won't happen any time soon in any country. If the machine decides to start breaking laws, there's no one to "punish".

For an analogous situation, the UK and US said "no" to an AI receiving a patent: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58668534

Cool premise for a sci-fi story though; imagine the machine is trained to find/hire a human "front person"/CEO that will always follow it's instructions to the letter. And, the real story begins when the human starts enacting their own agenda and has to defend their life from the AI seeking to "terminate" them and replace them...


👤 GDC7
Who/what is "dang"?