The influential Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, that in Nexusone of his last books, warned about the threats of possible “totalitarian” uses of artificial intelligence (AI), questioned today an article by Javier Milei published last week in the Financial Times. In his message, the President had been in favor of creating “automated societies”, which work with algorithms or robots, without the need for human resources. An initiative that even took the form of bill to reform the regulations that govern the country for the formation of companies.
“When I spoke at the World Economic Forum in January this year, I warned that governments could one day grant legal personality to AI models. “I never imagined that ‘someday’ would come just four months later,” Harari wrote in an article published today in the Financial Times and whose title is “We should not grant legal personality to AI agents.”
From the title, Harari is located on the sidewalk in front of Milei, who imagines a new typology of non-human companies with the aim of guaranteeing legal security for a type of investment that generally operates in a legal gray area. That idea is what arises from the bill pushed by the Minister of Deregulation, Federico Sturzenegger.
“Last week in this newspaper, Argentine President Javier Milei announced the creation of a new legal category for non-human corporations. Like traditional corporations, these non-human corporations will enjoy the benefits of legal personality. Presumably, they will be able to own assets, hire employees, engage in international trade, sue in court, and even donate to political campaigns. Unlike traditional corporations, they will be able to do all this without the intervention or responsibility of any human being. All decisions about buying, selling, contracting, investing, Litigations and donations may be taken by AI agents,” Harari wrote.
And he warned: “Granting legal personality to AIs would allow AI agents to undertake numerous new initiatives, potentially generating enormous wealth. However, legal personality is a general-purpose key that would also allow them to access our financial, economic and political systems. This raises many concerns.”
In NexusHarari dedicates hundreds of pages to reconstructing the history of information and, in particular, to analyzing the “dark side” of AI. While recognizing that it has positive uses, it also points out the risks that the development of AI could have for democracies.
“Thanks to their superior analytical capacity, AI corporations will be in a position to become experts in legal loopholes and regulatory arbitrage. And it will not be easy to dissuade them from participating in directly illegal activities, since the maximum sanction that deters human executives and employees—prison—is irrelevant for AIs. Until now, corporations have been run by human beings with a dual nature,” said the influential thinker, who has sold more than twenty-five million copies of his works. He added: “Human CEOs are corporate entities that care about the success of the company and fear things like bankruptcy. But they are also biological entities, who care even more about their freedom and happiness and fear spending ten years in prison. An AI CEO would be a purely corporate entity, and it is not clear what kind of sanctions could control him. If he faces bankruptcy – which is equivalent to his demise – he would presumably be willing to do anything to avoid that fate.”
Harari, an Israeli who does not agree politically with Benajamin Netanyahu, recalled that Milei in his article had cited the example of the Dutch East India Company, which consolidated Amsterdam as a global center of commerce and finance for having been pioneers of the limited liability company, according to the presidential view.
The Amsterdam case
Harari refuted what was stated by the Argentine president. “But the consequences of this innovation were felt most acutely not in Amsterdam, but in the port of Jayakarta, in what is now Indonesia. When the Dutch East India Company captured Jayakarta in 1619, they burned it and built a new city in its place. They called it Batavia, and it became the headquarters of a vast Asian empire administered by the Dutch East India Company. Historians refer to the Dutch Company of the East Indies as a “company state”, a political entity run by a private company, not for the benefit of its subject people, but of the company’s shareholders. The Dutch claimed to be a master race that deserved to conquer and exploit the natives thanks to supposed superior intelligence. But this was an illusion, and in the late 1940s the Indonesians finally gained their independence after a long and bloody struggle.
And he concluded: “Countries that grant AIs legal personality risk becoming something for which the historical record offers no analogy: not a corporate state, but an AI state, a country whose people could, in effect, be ruled by non-human corporations, which could be even more difficult to rebel against. Milei hopes to turn Buenos Aires into a new Amsterdam. Instead, it risks turning it into a new Batavia.”
Milei’s response
Given Harari’s publication, Milei reacted with a retweet to a message from Argentine businessman Martín Varsavsky to which he added the word “masterclass.”
But a few hours later, the President dedicated a message to the Israeli writer. “Dear @harari_yuval, thank you very much for participating in this fascinating and momentous debate. We are at the dawn of a new era, which places us, I believe, in a place not so different from the one you yourself described so well in *Sapiens* and your other books: that time when humans use fictions to organize our collective work and benefit from technology. Now more than ever we need all our intelligence to build the framework that allows us to take advantage of the incredible opportunities that lie ahead of us. I am already preparing my response! to see if we can calm your fears about the path I proposed last week!“, Milei reacted.
