Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list

[aga <aga@dhp.com>]

On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, jim bell wrote:

> At 09:05 PM 1/28/97 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote:
> 
> >I dare say that the downside of this is much less pleasant than the
> >virtual anarchy (in the bad sense) we suffer now.  If the police get
> >out of control, A.P. will arrive just in time to plug a few of those
> >holes, so to speak.  Ideally, future robotics should be able to
> >provide something like Gort (sp?) to take the place of human officers,
> >given advances in the kind of pattern matching needed to deter
> >aggression and the like.  Those who don't make it past the robots,
> >well, the rest of us can learn to behave, and we'll be much better
> >off when we do.
> 
> 
> Your comparison with the fictional Gort, in the movie "The day the earth 
> stood still" is of course apt.  It was only after I'd written most of the 
> essay that I realized that an AP-type system would function much as Gort did.  
> 
> Occasionally we (CP) see a spoof where somebody claims to have developed a 
> software program to "replace the judicial system" or something like that.  

You may be able to replace the "Letter of the Law" but you can not
replace the "Spirit of the Law" with an Android or a bot.  (notice
I refuse to type like a geek with those "`" characters)  So, humanoids
will always be entitled to a jury of their "peers" as the constitution
says, and that means no AI involved.

AI was made for usenet management.

> Well, the problem with such a claim (aside from the obvious and enormous 
> AI-type difficulties) is that the current system contains numerous biases.  
> Writing a program to replace the legal system would presumably require that 
> these biases be measured (and admitted-to!) and implemented into a 
> well-defined system.  
> 
> What we'd discover is that the current system only barely resembles the 
> guarantees in the US Constitution. At that point, there would be an argument 
> between those who will insist that the Constitution be followed, and those 
> who believe that the current de-facto system, however biased, be maintained 
> as-is.  
> 

The 12 to 0 verdict will always be the bias in favor of the defendant,
and it must stay that way.

>  
> 
> Jim Bell
> jimbell@pacifier.com
> 

With the different combinations of Perl and Java and Lisp that are
around today, the time will come when an android or an AI bot will
have become dangerous to society, and charged with a crime.
Will it be entitled to a jury of it's peers?

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