::scr hacking in life

[Alaric Snell]

On Tuesday 05 February 2002 15:48, you wrote:

> Is there anything else people would like to do that's illegal? [0]

I'd love to create an AI company with no human directors.

In summary, this would involve having a computer wired up to the Internet 
with an electronic banking facility.

It would hire agents to be the registered office - this is quite common 
anyway.

It would hire agents to sign things and negotiate contracts.

It would basically outsource everything required to run the company, and sit 
there shuffling money around and using algorithms to buy and sell stuff. It 
could do all sorts of business - buying and selling commodities (without them 
leaving the warehouses, of course! Outsource all that!).

It could, each year, hire some business consultants to suggest new businesses 
it should look into or changes into its existing business practices, and then 
hire a software firm to write a module for it.

The illegal part is that it would have no real shareholders and no real 
directors, they'd be imaginary people.

The interesting thing would be getting all these outsourced agencies to not 
realise that it isn't sentient. They would receive purchase orders by fax, 
post, or (maybe one day!) PGP-ed email, and be requested to reply only in 
certain specified formats so it could understand them. Any mail it didn't 
understand would have to be... outsourced to a human.

All the real work would be done by people, yes. But people under computer 
control. The final say would be in its hands. This is kind of interesting.

If people didn't pay it, it'd even hire the lads to pay them a visit for a 
little chat.

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software