Lets take the opencog list off this email, and move the conversation to the agi list .
2008/9/17 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > James, > > I agree that the topic is worth careful consideration. Sacrificing the > 'free as in freedom' aspect of AGPL-licensed OpenCog for reasons of > AGI safety and/or the prevention of abuse may indeed be necessary one > day. Err, ... but not legal. > I regularly engage many thinkers (including Richard Stallman, > original author of the GPL) on this and other related topics. > > One of many obstacles in the current legal framework worth considering > is that machine-generated things (like the utterances or self-recorded > thoughts of an AGI) are uncopyrightable and banished into a legal no- > mans-land. There is simply no existing legal framework to handle the > persons or products originating from AGIs. Law is built on precedent, and the precedent is that works produced by software are copyrightable. If I write a book using an open-source word-processor, I can claim copyright to that book. If I press a button that causes an open-source AGI to write a book, (possibly based on a large collection of input data that I gave it) then I can claim ownership of the resulting work. No, the crux of the problem is not that the output of an AGI isn't copyrightable ... it is, based on the above precedent. The crux of the problem is that the AGI cannot be legally recognized as an individual, with rights. But even then, there *is* a legal work-around! Under US law, corporations are accorded with many/most of the rights of individuals. Corporations can own things, corporations have expectations of privacy and secrecy, corporations cannot be forced to do anything they don't want to, as long as they have good lawyers on staff. You could conceivably shelter a human-level AGI within a corporate shell. Of course, a trans-human AGI is .. err.. will defacto find that it is not bound by human laws, and will find clever ways to protect itself, I doubt it will require the protection of humans. Recall -- laws are there to protect the weak from the strong. The strong don't really need protecting. I'm not worried about people enslaving AGI's; I'm worried about people being innocent bystanders, victimized by some sort of AGI shootout between the Chinese and American CIA -built AGI's (probably by means of some propaganda shootout, rather than a literal guns and bombs shootout. Modern warfare is also homesteading the noosphere) --linas ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
