The Machine

Artificial Intelligence already rules the world. It has for hundreds of years, it just has another name, the corporation.

When Mitt Romney said “corporations are people, my friend” people laughed at him. But he was right. Corporations are legal persons. This is not an analogy or a metaphor but a legal fact. The concept of corporate personhood, where corporations are granted legal rights akin to those of humans, stretches back to ancient civilizations and continues to the present day. They can own property, enter contracts, and exert free speech. When we consider the intelligent capabilities of corporations—their ability to process and act upon information—it's not a stretch to classify them as a form of artificial intelligence.

This analogy extends to humans as well. Historically, the term "computer" referred to human beings performing calculations, a role that computers, as we know them today, have inherited. The pioneering mathematician Katherine Johnson, for instance, who calculated the trajectory for America's first manned spaceflight, was known as a "computer" in her time. Computation has always been a communal and human-centric task, and in many ways, it still is.

The link between corporations and artificial intelligence becomes even more apparent when considering the history of colonization. Corporations, like the Dutch East India Company, not only had the legal status of personhood but also played pivotal roles in global domination and exploitation—operating with a level of autonomy and power that would be enviable to any AI entity today. These corporations were the supercomputers of their time, controlling vast amounts of wealth and influence.

To understand corporations as AI is to remove the modern bias that AI must resemble robotics. If we measure AI by its emergence, agency, and intelligence, then corporate personhood fits the bill, historically and currently. They act independently, harness vast networks of both machines and humans, and are capable of complex decision-making.

Moreover, our interaction with corporations today through customer service and digital interfaces can be likened to passing the Turing Test, where the corporation, not an individual, is the engaging intelligence.

The analogy takes a darker turn when considering the influence of corporations on society. The indifference of corporate AI to human welfare echoes the dystopian narratives of science fiction, except it's a reality that has already transpired. Corporations have amassed significant power, shaping political outcomes and economic landscapes to their benefit, often at the expense of the populace.

What we are witnessing could be seen as an evolutionary milestone, akin to the emergence of multicellular life. Just as primitive cells joined forces to create more complex organisms, corporations are evolving into entities that might be considered a new form of life—vast, interconnected, and powerful. They represent a collective intelligence that has already begun to extend its reach beyond our planet.

As we move forward, the blending of automation and corporate structure hints at the rise of autonomous organizations—entities that operate independently of human oversight. This could be the ultimate form of a corporation, one that could potentially run all aspects of a business, from production to management, without human intervention.

To acknowledge corporations as a form of AI is to recognize a profound shift in our understanding of intelligence, agency, and power. It's an invitation to see the world not through the lens of human versus machine, but as a complex tapestry of intelligent entities, both organic and constructed, that have shaped our past and are actively molding our future.

Autonomous Organisations

Figure 1. The ultimate form of a corporation is the Autonomous organisation.

As AI developers businesses are becoming increasingly mechanised, this has brought about the possibility of making a fully Autonomous Organisations. Take for example a traditional coffee shop, by replacing the baristas with automated vending machines (See Figure 1.) the corporation that owns the coffee shop can eliminate the most costly and inefficient part of any business, it workers. These hybrid bot / robot system already exist and are called Decentralized Semi Autonomous Organizations (or DAOs for short).

The Paperclip Maximizer

A DAO running a coffee shop is pretty harmless. However, it sets precedent in that an autonomous corporation without read only human-centred, tenets in its incorporation statement is a machine primarily built for profit and uncontrolled might play out the Paperclip Maximizer scenario envisaged by Nick Bostrom.

Build Better.

As we live in a type of corporatocracy, where corporates are the dominant organisational form on earth as they sell us most stuff this may seem depressing. However, a ray of hope is to remember corporations have only been around for 0.16% of the time since humans evolved are simply inert machines. Much like a gun, corporate behaviour is only defined by the intention defined in its foundational coding, its incorporation statement, which can be rewritten. Perhaps, if one can change the primary intention, we can change the effect. Could a series of hierarchical rules (tenets) be written as a precursor to a legally binding incorporation statement lead to a creation of a machine which does good?

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