tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post2023449402530827807..comments2024-03-28T13:39:27.601-07:00Comments on DSHR's Blog: It Isn't About The TechnologyDavid.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-40081136216790589472023-02-20T08:05:44.337-08:002023-02-20T08:05:44.337-08:00Hey David. I was re-reading this prior to recommen...Hey David. I was re-reading this prior to recommending it to my cryptocurrency discussion group on FB, and I was delighted by how well you predicted the current state of affairs, especially with respect to Meta and Alphabet. Geoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07521391745343783288noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-40059617602983638502022-08-12T03:11:59.652-07:002022-08-12T03:11:59.652-07:00The concept of "information fiduciaries"...The concept of "information fiduciaries" has surged to the forefront of debates on online platform regulation. Developed by Professor Jack Balkin, the concept is meant to rebalance the relationship between ordinary individuals and the digital companies that accumulate, analyze, and sell their personal data for profit. Just as the law imposes special duties of care, confidentiality, and loyalty on doctors, lawyers, and accountants vis- à -vis their patients and clients, Balkin argues, so too should it impose special duties on corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter vis-à-vis their end users. Over the past several years, this argument has garnered remarkably broad support and essentially zero critical pushback.<br />https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4503292949532760618&postID=2023449402530827807jimmyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17582066882273977667noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-40359417239774737322019-10-12T00:25:15.434-07:002019-10-12T00:25:15.434-07:00John Ryan's Why Decentralize? is a useful over...John Ryan's <a href="https://medium.com/decentralized-web/why-decentralize-5d8e9dcedb2c" rel="nofollow"><i>Why Decentralize?</i></a> is a useful overview with links to many views of the issues. But for me it is still too focused on technology, not on the economic reason the decentralized technologies of the Internet got assembled into large centralized systems.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-4697542817436706422019-09-16T06:19:42.828-07:002019-09-16T06:19:42.828-07:00Scott Galloway's take on the Death Stars of te...Scott Galloway's take on the <a href="https://www.profgalloway.com/search-your-feelings" rel="nofollow">Death Stars of technology</a> is a good read:<br /><br />"They started out benign, a group committed to peace and prosperity in the galaxy. Slowly, they aggregated power and, wanting to maintain that power, turned to the dark side. They built a weapon 900km in diameter, staffed by hundreds of thousands of personnel and robots. Of course I’m talking about the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station commanded by Governor Tarkin — and also Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. <br /><br />The Death Stars of our economy can use bundling and economic power to add services and features that can destroy a promising business, at the speed of light."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-90394273357943110642019-03-30T13:44:45.678-07:002019-03-30T13:44:45.678-07:00David Z. Morris reports that Vitalik Buterin Is Em...David Z. Morris reports that <a href="https://breakermag.com/vitalik-buterin-is-embracing-a-new-role-political-theorist/" rel="nofollow"><i>Vitalik Buterin Is Embracing a New Role: Political Theorist</i></a>:<br /><br />"One of my theses here is that the cypherpunks’ attempts to get into the money business forced them to realize some other things along the way. And [one of those things] is that money is a fundamentally social thing in a much deeper way than, say, two-party encrypted communication, ... You have to start thinking about governance, social contracts … common shared expectations in this community, how do changes get made, how do we decide how changes get made, how do we discuss things … These are all very political things."<br /><br />Good to know.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-6824002000234860352019-03-05T17:10:21.559-08:002019-03-05T17:10:21.559-08:00Jack Balkin:
"has been developing a theory o...<a href="https://balkin.blogspot.com/2019/02/balkanization-on-balkinization.html" rel="nofollow">Jack Balkin</a>:<br /><br />"has been developing a theory of “information fiduciaries” for the past five years or so. The theory is motivated by the observation that ordinary people are enormously vulnerable to and dependent on the leading online platforms—Facebook, Google, Twitter, Uber, and the like. To mitigate this vulnerability and ensure these companies do not betray the trust people place in them, Balkin urges that we draw on principles of fiduciary obligation."<br /><br /><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3341661" rel="nofollow">Lina Kahn and David Pozen beg to differ</a>. They seek to:<br /><br />"disrupt the emerging consensus by identifying a number of lurking tensions and ambiguities in the theory of information fiduciaries, as well as a number of reasons to doubt the theory’s capacity to resolve them satisfactorily. Although we agree with Balkin that the harms stemming from dominant online platforms call for legal intervention, we question whether the concept of information fiduciaries is an adequate or apt response to the problems of information insecurity that he stresses, much less to more fundamental problems associated with outsized market share and business models built on pervasive surveillance."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-69653686972771878172019-01-19T19:14:09.433-08:002019-01-19T19:14:09.433-08:00Roger McNamee has expanded the thoughts referenced...Roger McNamee has expanded the thoughts referenced above into a book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zucked-Waking-Up-Facebook-Catastrophe-ebook/dp/B07FC5BZYV/" rel="nofollow"><i>Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe</i></a>. The ideas laid out above are echoed in an <a href="http://time.com/5505441/mark-zuckerberg-mentor-facebook-downfall/" rel="nofollow">extract published in <i>Time</i></a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-49404346450209365542018-12-15T19:26:34.943-08:002018-12-15T19:26:34.943-08:00Karl Bode's Facebook's Use Of Smear Mercha...Karl Bode's <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181115/10073141056/facebooks-use-smear-merchants-is-norm-not-exception.shtml" rel="nofollow"><i>Facebook's Use Of Smear Merchants Is The Norm, Not The Exception</i></a> is an example of Facebook's "Slow AI" in action, and how typical it is of oligopolists:<br /><br />" While Facebook's decision to smear critics instead of owning their own obvious dysfunction is clearly idiotic, much of the backlash has operated under the odd belief that Facebook's behavior is some kind of exception, not the norm. Countless companies employ think tanks, consultants, bogus news ops, PR firms, academics, and countless other organizations to spread falsehoods, pollute the public discourse, and smear their critics on a daily basis. It's a massive industry. Just ask the telecom sector.<br /><br />In the last decade alone broadband providers and firms far worse than Definers have been caught <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170213/14460536703/comcast-att-are-paying-minority-groups-to-support-killing-net-neutrality.shtml" rel="nofollow">paying minority groups</a> to generate bunk support for bad policy, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/verizon-led-massive-astroturf-campaign-to-end-nj-broadband-obligation/" rel="nofollow">hijacking consumer identities</a> to support bad policy, creating <a href="http://www.theamericanconsumer.org/2009/04/open-letter-to-senator-john-f-kerry/" rel="nofollow">bogus consumer groups</a> to generate fake support for bad policy, flooding the news wires endlessly with <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160607/09295034649/jesse-jackson-likens-fcc-cable-box-reform-plan-to-snarling-dogs-water-hoses-church-bombings.shtml" rel="nofollow">misleading op/eds without disclosing financial conflicts of interest</a>, stocking public meetings with <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080226/144346360.shtml" rel="nofollow">cardboard cutouts</a> (so real people can't attend), or filling news comments sections and social media with <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnq4ak/trolls-paid-by-a-telecom-lobbying-firm-keep-commenting-on-my-net-neutrality-articles-806" rel="nofollow">bullshit criticism</a> of corporate critics."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-58104102959026732202018-12-08T18:34:18.172-08:002018-12-08T18:34:18.172-08:00Catalin Cimpanu's Senator blasts FTC for faili...Catalin Cimpanu's <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/senator-blasts-ftc-for-failing-to-crack-down-on-googles-ad-fraud-problems/" rel="nofollow"><i>Senator blasts FTC for failing to crack down on Google's ad fraud problems</i></a> reports on Senator Mark Warner third letter to the FTC about Google and ad fraud:<br /><br />"Google is directly profiting by letting ad fraud run rampant at the expense of the companies who buy or sell ads on its platform.<br /><br />However, Warner is just as mad about the FTC as he is about Google, claiming the FTC has failed to take action against the Mountain View-based company for more than two years since he and New York Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer first wrote the agency about Google's ad fraud problem."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-30840549828815319522018-08-18T08:23:37.163-07:002018-08-18T08:23:37.163-07:00Senator Elizabeth Warren's Accountable Capital...Senator Elizabeth Warren's <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-introduces-accountable-capitalism-act" rel="nofollow">Accountable Capitalism Act</a> is a thoughtful attempt to re-program US companies' "Slow AIs". It would force companies with more than $1B in revenue to obtain a Federal rather than a state charter, eliminating the race to the bottom among states to charter companies.<br /><br />40% of these companies' boards would have to be elected by workers. Directors and officers could not sell shares within 5 years of acquiring them, nor within 3 years of any stock buyback. Any political expenditures would require 75% votes of directors and shareholders. And, most importantly, it would permit the Federal government to revoke a company's charter for "a history of egregious and repeated illegal conduct and has failed to take meaningful steps to address its problems" such as those, for example, at Wells Fargo. States (cough, cough, Delaware) would never revoke a large company's charter for fear of sparking an exodus.<br /><br />Hat tip <a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/deprogramming-economic-cult-by.html" rel="nofollow">"Undercover Blue" at Digby's Hullabaloo</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-8995467789135104492018-07-20T12:34:53.889-07:002018-07-20T12:34:53.889-07:00The EU fining Google $5B elicits this response fro...The <a href="https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/07/18/0636205/eu-regulators-fine-google-record-5-billion-in-android-case" rel="nofollow">EU fining Google $5B</a> elicits this <a href="https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1019562507294461953" rel="nofollow">response from DuckDuckGo</a>:<br /><br />"Up until just last year, it was impossible to add DuckDuckGo to Chrome on Android, and it is still impossible on Chrome on iOS. We are also not included in the default list of search options like we are in Safari, even though we are among the top search engines in many countries. The Google search widget is featured prominently on most Android builds and is impossible to change the search provider. For a long time it was also impossible to even remove this widget without installing a launcher that effectively changed the whole way the OS works. Their anti-competitive search behavior isn't limited to Android. Every time we update our Chrome browser extension, all of our users are faced with an official-looking dialogue asking them if they'd like to revert their search settings and disable the entire extension. Google also owns http://duck.com and points it directly at Google search, which consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-10981466863014423952018-07-19T14:00:07.566-07:002018-07-19T14:00:07.566-07:00Felix Salmon's The False Tale of Amazon's ...Felix Salmon's <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-false-tale-of-amazons-industry-conquering-juggernaut/" rel="nofollow"><i>The False Tale of Amazon's Industry-Conquering Juggernaut</i></a> makes the case that Amazon hasn't been as successful at disrupting <i>established</i> industries (except book publishing) as the stock market thinks. But that doesn't mean <i>startups</i> shouldn't be very afraid; because Amazon owns their computing infrastructure it has good visibility into which startups are worth buying or nuking.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-962989506463704912018-07-06T08:57:29.999-07:002018-07-06T08:57:29.999-07:00Perhaps it is simpler to say that Intel…was disrup...<a href="https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/intel-disruption-594f806cfc21?gi=e84877ef5f99" rel="nofollow"><i>Perhaps it is simpler to say that Intel…was disrupted</i></a> by Steven Sinofsky is fascinating commentary on Ben Thompson's <a href="https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integration/" rel="nofollow"><i>Intel and the Danger of Integration</i></a>:<br /><br />"Disruption is never one feature, but full set of *assumptions* that go into a business."<br /><br />That is another way of putting the "slow AI" concept.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-8851735298736772752018-06-27T07:47:38.467-07:002018-06-27T07:47:38.467-07:00Rachel M Cohen's Has the New America Foundatio...Rachel M Cohen's <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/06/24/has-new-america-foundation-lost-its-way-anne-marie-slaughter/" rel="nofollow"><i>Has the New America Foundation Lost its Way?</i></a> lays out the way "slow AIs" took over the New America Foundation and led to the defenestration of the Open Markets team I discussed above.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-80374470330642460762018-06-26T15:47:44.076-07:002018-06-26T15:47:44.076-07:00In his must-read Intel and the Danger of Integrati...In his must-read <a href="https://stratechery.com/2018/intel-and-the-danger-of-integration/" rel="nofollow"><i>Intel and the Danger of Integration</i></a>, Ben Thompson describes how Intel became the latest large "slow AI" to get trapped defending its margins:<br /><br />"The company’s integrated model resulted in incredible margins for years, and every time there was the possibility of a change in approach Intel’s executives chose to keep those margins."<br /><br />Actually, Intel's slow AI forced them to make that choice, just as Sun's did.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-17730198244783316942018-06-23T08:10:24.124-07:002018-06-23T08:10:24.124-07:00"In 1993, John Gilmore famously said that “Th..."In 1993, John Gilmore famously <a href="http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html" rel="nofollow">said</a> that “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” That was technically true when he said it but only because the routing structure of the Internet was so distributed. As centralization increases, the Internet loses that robustness, and censorship by governments and companies becomes easier." from <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/censorship-age-large-cloud-providers" rel="nofollow"><i>Censorship in the Age of Large Cloud Providers</i></a> by Bruce Schneier.<br /><br />I believe that current efforts to decentralize the Web won't be successful for economic reasons. Bruce adds another reason, because governments everywhere prefer that it be centralized. But that doesn't mean either of us think decentralizing the Web isn't important.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-42628218646994653962018-05-25T10:36:51.854-07:002018-05-25T10:36:51.854-07:00Cory Doctorow's Facebook is worth much less to...Cory Doctorow's <a href="https://boingboing.net/2018/05/25/how-much-to-quit-facebook.html" rel="nofollow"><i>Facebook is worth much less to its users than search and email, but it keeps a larger share of the value</i></a> reports on an experiment by:<br /><br />" Economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Felix Eggers and Avinash Gannamaneni have published an <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w24514" rel="nofollow">NBER paper</a> (<a href="https://sci-hub.tw/downloads/7f92/10.3386@w24514.pdf#view=FitH" rel="nofollow">Sci-Hub mirror</a>) detailing an experiment where they offered Americans varying sums to give up Facebook, and then used a less-rigorous means to estimate much much Americans valued other kinds of online services: maps, webmail, search, etc.<br /><br />They concluded that 20% of Facebook's users value the service at less than a dollar a month, and at $38/month, half of Facebook's users would quit.<br /><br />Search is the most valued online service -- the typical American won't give up search for less than $17,500/year -- while social media is the least valuable ($300)."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-12919084953727288432018-05-16T08:31:33.046-07:002018-05-16T08:31:33.046-07:00People like convenience more than privacy – so no,...<a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/16/people_blockchain_and_a_decentralised_web/" rel="nofollow"><i>People like convenience more than privacy – so no, blockchain will not 'decentralise the web'</i></a> by Matt Asay makes the same point:<br /><br />"It's not that a blockchain-based web isn't possible. After all, the original web was decentralised, too, and came with the privacy guarantees that blockchain-based options today purport to deliver. No, the problem is people.<br /><br />As user interface designer Brennan Novak <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-mission-to-decentralize-the-internet" rel="nofollow">details</a>, though the blockchain may solve the crypto crowd's privacy goals, it fails to offer something as secure and easy as a (yes) <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/04/delete_facebook_login/" rel="nofollow">Facebook or Google login</a>: 'The problem exists somewhere between the barrier to entry (user-interface design, technical difficulty to set up, and overall user experience) versus the perceived value of the tool, as seen by Joe Public and Joe Amateur Techie.'"David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-74509815532828538472018-05-02T10:33:01.087-07:002018-05-02T10:33:01.087-07:00In The Real Villain Behind Our New Gilded Age Eric...In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/opinion/monopoly-power-new-gilded-age.html" rel="nofollow"><i>The Real Villain Behind Our New Gilded Age</i></a> Eric Posner and Glen Weyl reinforce the meme that the absence of effective antitrust policy is the cause of many of society's ills, including inequality, slow economic growth and the FAANGs:<br /><br />"the rise of the internet has bestowed enormous market power on the tech titans — Google, Facebook — that rely on networks to connect users. Yet again, antitrust <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/business/dealbook/expect-little-antitrust-challenge-to-walmarts-bid-for-jet-com.html" rel="nofollow">enforcers have not stopped</a> these new robber barons from buying up their nascent competitors. Facebook swallowed Instagram and WhatsApp; Google swallowed DoubleClick and Waze. This has allowed these firms to achieve near-monopolies over new services based on user data, such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/technology/meet-the-people-who-train-the-robots-to-do-their-own-jobs.html" rel="nofollow">training machine learning and artificial intelligence systems</a>. As a result, antitrust authorities allowed the creation of the world’s most powerful oligopoly and the rampant exploitation of user data."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-74899728913093505632018-03-31T07:22:09.344-07:002018-03-31T07:22:09.344-07:00Cory Doctorow points out that:
"In 2007, the...<a href="https://boingboing.net/2018/03/30/historical-perspective.html" rel="nofollow">Cory Doctorow points out that</a>:<br /><br />"In 2007, the Guardian's Victor Keegan published "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" in which he enumerated the unbridgeable moats and unscalable walls that "Rupert Murdoch's Myspace" had erected around itself, evaluating all the contenders to replace Myspace and finding them wanting."<br /><br />I could be wrong! But that was then and this is now. Facebook is far bigger and more embedded than MySpace ever was.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-57740844692035536292018-03-18T06:33:40.488-07:002018-03-18T06:33:40.488-07:00"An index of 10 tech growth shares pushed its..."An index of 10 tech growth shares pushed its advance to 23 percent so far this year, giving the group an annualized return since early 2016 of 67 percent. That frenzied pace tops the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 66 percent return in the final two years of the dot-com bubble." writes <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-15/looking-like-bubble-fang-rally-outpacing-heyday-of-tech-frenzy" rel="nofollow">Lu Wang at <i>Bloomberg</i></a>:<br /><br />"In addition to the quartet of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, the NYSE index also includes Apple, Twitter, Alibaba, Baidu, Nvidia and Tesla. These companies have drawn money as investors bet that their dominance in areas from social media to e-commerce will foster faster growth. ... At 64 times earnings, the companies in the NYSE FANG+ Index are valued at a multiple that’s almost three times the broader gauge’s. That compared with 2.7 in March 2000."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-1479475184158777392018-03-14T13:35:03.144-07:002018-03-14T13:35:03.144-07:00Shira Ovide's How Amazon’s Bottomless Appetite...Shira Ovide's <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-amazon-industry-displacement/" rel="nofollow"><i>How Amazon’s Bottomless Appetite Became Corporate America’s Nightmare</i></a> concludes:<br /><br />"Amazon is far from invulnerable. All the same old red flags are there—a puny 2.7 percent e-commerce profit in North America, massive outlays to establish delivery routes abroad—but few are paying attention. Anyone buying a share of Amazon stock today is agreeing to pay upfront for the next 180 years of profit. By one measure, it’s generating far less cash than investors believe. <b>And its biggest risk may be the fear of its power in Washington, New York, and Brussels, a possible prelude to regulatory crackdown</b>." [my emphasis]David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-69503211086133129322018-03-04T06:11:18.764-08:002018-03-04T06:11:18.764-08:00Lina Kahn's The Supreme Court Case That Could ...Lina Kahn's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/opinion/the-supreme-court-case-that-could-give-tech-giants-more-power.html" rel="nofollow"><i>The Supreme Court Case That Could Give Tech Giants More Power</i></a> reports:<br /><br />"But the decision in a case currently before the Supreme Court could block off that path, by effectively shielding big tech platforms from serious antitrust scrutiny. On Monday the Court heard Ohio v. American Express, a case centering on a technical but critical question about how to analyze harmful conduct by firms that serve multiple groups of users. Though the case concerns the credit card industry, it could have sweeping ramifications for the way in which antitrust law gets applied generally, especially with regards to the tech giants."David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-55537098474460362332018-03-02T07:31:10.769-08:002018-03-02T07:31:10.769-08:00What happens if you give an AI control over a corp...<a href="https://boingboing.net/2018/03/01/what-happens-if-you-give-an-ai.html" rel="nofollow"><i>What happens if you give an AI control over a corporation?</i></a> is an interesting question. Clive Thompson points to a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954173" rel="nofollow">paper</a> by <a href="https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/lynn-m-lopucki/" rel="nofollow"> UCLA law professor Lynn Lopucki</a>:<br /><br />"Odds are high you'd see them emerge first in criminal enterprises, as ways of setting up entities that engage in nefarious activities but cannot be meaningfully punished (in human terms, anyway), even if they're caught, he argues. Given their corporate personhood in the US, they'd enjoy the rights to own property, to enter into contracts, to legal counsel, to free speech, and to buy politicians -- so they could wreak a lot of havoc."<br /><br />Not that the current "slow AIs" can be "meaningfully punished" if they engage in "nefarious activities".David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-5798578595075752822018-03-02T07:22:01.441-08:002018-03-02T07:22:01.441-08:00Sam D'Amico argues that it is about the techno...Sam D'Amico argues that it <a href="https://medium.com/@samdamico/blockchain-technology-decentralization-and-magical-thinking-28d1cf1a2c03" rel="nofollow"><i>is</i> about the technology</a>, in a sense.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.com