tl;dr - A treaty that credibly banned “whatever weapons might end humanity” and enforced by the Japanese (or at least the Japanese national tax authority) would, I think, have a strong chance of achieving the desired objective.
Great article, thank you for all your writing. Working in Tokyo, I have what might be a useful counterexample on this take: *"This is a painfully common dynamic in corporate law. For example, multinationals routinely practice tax avoidance right up to the legal line of tax evasion. They can prove with audited books that what they’re doing is legal, even if it clearly undermines the spirit of the law."*
Experience adjacent to the Japan National Tax Authority has taught me that they are far more likely than Western tax authorities to sanction companies walking up to the line with "tax mitigation". They do this with a combination of ambiguous lines (rather than bright... (read more)
Since reading this a few years ago, I've often thought about the Void and Musashi's advice. For the reference of anyone like me, the quote in its full context is comes after a description of the 'five fundamental stances' in 'the Way of the sword'. Here it is from the 2001 Wilson translation of the Five Rings -- I think it's worth thinking about together with the piece above:
The Lesson of Stance/No Stance
What is called Stance/No Stance means that there is no stance that you should take with your sword at all. However, as I place this within the Five Stances, there is a stance here. According to the chances your opponent... (read more)
I had a twenty hour drive by myself recently, and binged Otherness in the Age of AGI. It was tremendous. Ambitious to take on the entire thing in one session!
Agree with this. Law is downstream of a particular medium-scale ontology of human agency. A paperclip maximizer, as mythologized, would be working with a different notion of agency, by definition.
Querying check_legality("clippy's plan"), would be like checking the temperature of the number "100". Sure, it might kinda sound like its hot, or illegal, but that's not the kind of input that check_legality() currently takes.
check_legality() can't even handle the agency of nation states ...
Genius. I'm stealing this for use in a professional setting. I'll have lawyers read chapters of "Co-Intelligence" by Ethank Mollick, and get them to focus on the useful parts for their own law firms...
(Also going to use this on "Legal Systems Very Different..." for our ACX group!)
I'm a lawyer (NY licensed) working in Tokyo, and this account of the Japanese penal system is incorrect. Prosecutors in Japan are extremely, extremely hesitant to bring a criminal case into the penal system, and so when cases are brought they are far beyond "a reasonable doubt". As a slightly misleading short summary, this, rather than lack of concern for false positives, is the reason for the notorious 99% conviction rate of criminal cases in Japan.
I've also been unhoused in a few different countries for short periods of time.
I'm certain that my affinity for Japan has its roots in needing this peaceful cultural of public safety.
Completely in agreement with Domenic (though, full disclosure, we're both in AISafety東京 members).
What's missing in the Japanese space is attempts to answer the question of why the Anglo-US views on AI are relevant in Japan. Anglo-Americans may think it's obvious why that question isn't relevant... which just closes the loop.
Yes. But Deepl is also in the running. All three have different use cases and nuances. Google translate, for example, provides more straightforward translation with phonetics when translating EN>JP. GPT-4 provides more natural but also more often incorrect translations. (This has been the state of affairs for a month. At the current rate of change, I expect this comment will be out of date fast.)
Indeed, on global scale the Anti-Whatever Weapons Might End Humanity (Anti-WW MEH!) treaty would require global enforcement power to catch "off-shoring". But that's true of any global treaty!
So, is this an ex post, quite subjective decision each time? Or do they just treat all forms of tax avoidance as tax evasion?
It's a holistic decision each time taking account of everything. This is how works with almost all things we learn in law school - most obviously in criminal cases: mens rea sometimes seems to apply from sheer recklessness; an imprisonment sometimes comes out as assault & battery even when there's nothing physical about it; a killing sometimes comes out as self-defence even... (read more)