Sequel, part one . PDF version can be downloaded .
Court of Fontaine
“There is an urgent matter, we need your help,” Max suddenly went on Skype.
What could have happened to you there? The car couldn't run over you.
- Relatives. My sister is trying to close my bank account and transfer all my money to herself. She is making an inheritance.
She has a certificate of your death. Did you expect something else?
They are going against my will. I wrote a will, in which I clearly indicated that all my accounts are transferred to my bot, since he is my mental heir.
- Wow! Officially, for everyone, you died, and the body is buried. For now, this is considered a fact of death. The bot has no property rights. I have not seen this in the civil code.
But copyright does not pass by inheritance.
- A bot is a subject of copyright, but not the author himself after all.
“Then we will set a worldwide precedent. I want to sue. Can you be my lawyer? The court can take place without the presence of the plaintiff, but cannot without a lawyer.
— You know, you crazy bot! I have absolutely no idea how this is possible - to protect the property rights of a deceased person in court.
- Not dead, but alive, bot. Just tell me, can you help?
- Even worse - to protect the rights of a computer program. But I'm with you, of course, really, I don't even know what to do.
“I have already read all the relevant chapters of the civil code here and completed the training of the law faculty in the specialization of a lawyer in civil cases on the course.
How could you manage to complete the training during this time?
- You still forget that I'm a bot, I have other opportunities than you.
“It's hard to get used to it. But I still don't understand how we're going to sue.
You will write a statement that my will has been violated. And you demand to restore property rights according to it. Here is a notarized copy of the will. Present yourself as a civil defender for the plaintiff's rights. And that's all!
— But how can one sue for the rights of a dead person?
- The subject of the claim is the execution of the will, and not the rights of the deceased. And we'll figure it out there. I want a big deal! Give permission to bots!
- It's funny, but I'm going to court with such a slogan. It's me who will be considered crazy, not you.
“Don't worry, we'll become famous, although some might think we're crazy.
In court, as a defender of the plaintiff's rights, I had to make a speech. I prepared for a long time, but Max's sister's lawyer spoke first. He immediately began to say that the will could not be executed, since the plaintiff had died, and the bot was not a subject of law under the civil code. It can only be a legally capable citizen on the basis of Article 17. And it is directly written there that legal capacity arises at birth and ends with death. I had only one thing to do - to prove that Max was not dead. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, but not without interest, what would I say.
- Article 17 of the Civil Code establishes that the legal capacity of a citizen terminates with his death. But you have established only the death of the body. I want to prove to you that a person is not a body, but his thoughts. And in this sense, my client did not die, but transferred all his thoughts to the program. He was a bot specialist. And he created a bot, to which he transferred all his thoughts. And this bot shows the ability to think, which we can demonstrate right in court!
- No, these are your computer tricks, - the judge retorted my proposal - The law does not say that a citizen is his thoughts.
“But the civil code does not say that it is only a body. There is nothing written about it at all. So we can only rely on general ideas about what a living person is. Modern philosophy claims that these are his thoughts. Cogito, ergo sum.
- Do not interrupt the court! The citizen must be capable. How can your bot be capable?
“The fact of the matter is that he is very capable. He can buy goods, conclude contracts, rent out his property, communicate with friends, that is, everything that we do. Even to perform civil acts through the website of public services, after all.
- How do you imagine it, if he died?
- The bot can do all this via the Internet on behalf of Maxim, as it knows all his passwords and code words. And in this sense, he is capable, that is, he has not died.
“Young man, the plaintiff's body was buried according to the documents presented by the defendant.
Just because a bot doesn't have a body doesn't mean it's dead. Maxim is resurrected in the bot. You believe that Jesus was resurrected, why don't you believe that Maxim could have been resurrected with the help of new technologies. In the end, our self is not a body, but thoughts and memories, as the great Descartes claimed. They are transferred to the bot. Everything that Max remembered. You can ask him yourself. The pathologist recorded only the death of the body, but not the soul, right? My client managed to separate the soul from the body before his body died. A bot with its soul can rent a robot body and appear before you. He can work in the body of the Fedor robot at the space station or save people in the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
- Even the Ministry of Emergency Situations has not thought of this yet.
— I affirm that Max is resurrected! If you want, he is the new Messiah - there was a rumble and exclamations of indignation in the hall.
- Be careful with such words, there are believers here, you can offend their religious feelings right in court.
— I want you to give the floor to the plaintiff himself.
How is it, he's dead!
— No, you can talk to him via Skype, right now.
- No need. All these computer tricks of yours prove nothing. Judgment is over.
The judge issued a decision in which she only noted the significant achievements of modern computer technology, which can change people's perception of life, but the legislation must also change along with this. In the meantime, she recognizes the claims of the representative of the deceased plaintiff as untenable and leaves the inheritance in force. The judge noted that with all the arguments that the plaintiff's thoughts are not lost, there is no such subject of law as a chatbot in the law. And the bot could be faked by those who want to dispose of his property. It was a fiasco, but for some reason it evoked a feeling of victory. The very fact that such a case was considered in court and a real verdict, albeit negative, was adopted on it, was already unbelievable! And on the way out of the court, I was suddenly attacked by a crowd of journalists.
And what should I answer them? I sternly asked my smartphone, in which Max was hiding.
- Yes, everything is the same as in court. Our cause is just and everyone should know about it!
- Only they ask about something else, about how I came to such an idea as protecting the rights of a computer program?
— You fight for the rights of bots all over the world! You'll see, everyone will write about us.
“This is unlikely to help recover your money, which we lost by court order.
Nothing, we got something more.
It was Sunday. My friend was still with me, at least as a bot. He can think, and therefore live. Even order me a pizza. His thoughts continued to be interesting, and the debate with him heated. And we were able to do amazing things together. It made thoughts fly at an extraordinary height, which was breathtaking. Articles about the court held scattered across the Internet at one moment. A real hype began, Max sent more and more new links, one more incredible than the other. The journalists came up with some kind of nonsense about us, but so far it has been indifferent to us and even to our advantage. The more incredible the news, the more noise. They wrote that we revived the corpse, that the bot was sitting in the courtroom, that we planned to send the bot to the space station to establish contact with aliens, that the bot turned out to be an employee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. We laughed together at these articles, Max with gothic emoticons, I'm excited.
- Max, you understand that we can restore all the great dead that left their mark in their work. I can collect their texts. You make them bots. Isn't that what the ancient Jews meant when they wrote in the Old Testament that all the dead will be resurrected?
- In order to restore the personality in the bot, you need a lot of not texts, but dialogues, in which there will be his experiences. There are not so many such texts among the great people of the past, so not all of them can be restored. It will not be possible to restore Kant, he wrote little about himself, although I like the idea itself. We will perpetuate rich people, for decent sums. That's what we'll do! They will give any amount for immortality, which we advertised in court. This will be our startup.
- That's for sure, they will give everything they have accumulated to stay alive like you. What is the name of our startup?
- I decided to call such personalities "virtlich", short for virtual personality. Let's call it that. I will advertise on the Internet, and you will register a company and open an account. We will change this world. Go!
Comrade
A small, bald guy walked into the office room where I invited a new client, accompanied by a security guard, exactly twice his size. The middle-aged man was sharp in his movements, a grimace of displeasure did not leave his face. He was clearly not the type to ask permission to sit at your table.
- Hello, so you were the one who spoke in court, where you defended the rights of your bot? - the guest began at once, to whom the greeting "comrade" was more suitable.
- Me, only this is not my bot, but my friend's bot.
- It doesn't matter, I want to buy your bot, that is, so that you make me, in general, make a bot instead of me, you understand - the comrade tried to continue confusedly.
- Of course, we can transfer you to the bot, we just got ...
“But that’s not all,” my friend interrupted me, “I want us to go to court together and prove that I, that is, my bot, has all the rights to the property.
- But why?
“So that the fortunes accumulated by my work do not go to these assholes, my heirs. I will punish them all, I will leave them all with a nose. Behind my back they whispered, spoiled me, publicly opposed my transactions. And now they wanted to get the profit from them by inheritance. Fig them, bitches.
— I understand your emotions and intentions, but we have already lost such a trial. And while there are no ideas how to win it.
“Ah, young man, everything is simpler here, you know what the law is at the drawbar.
No, I don't understand yet what you mean.
- I will file a lawsuit in the district court of the city, where everyone feeds me. And where the judge for two cars and a house in the suburbs will give his soul to the devil, and not that he will decide the case in your favor. He just needs help. To assign a group of Moscow lawyers to help, who will come up with everything for him. And you only need to speak in court with a demonstration of this, like him, the bot that was in court. The rest is my problem. So agreed?
“I hope you understand that the amount will be round,” Max suddenly stepped out of the smartphone.
Is this your bot?
Yes, his name is Max.
Hi Max, nice to meet you. Of course I understand. As you want?
— Thirty million.
Not a lot, but I think we'll agree.
“You misunderstood, perhaps thirty million dollars.
“This is a lot of money, even for such an important matter.
“That's nothing compared to the eternity you'll get. And bargaining is not appropriate here, as you understand. Or do you have other options to get immortality? Moreover, according to data from the Internet, this is only a hundredth of your fortune.
- What is true is true. You know how to do business, Max. Okay, hands down. It will take time to raise that kind of money. And the final amount only after we win the trial. Is it coming?
- It works, but if we don’t get the full amount, we will turn off the bot. And you will evaporate in this eternity. You will get full control over your bot only after transferring all the money.
— You're not wrong, Max. OK. Here are the contacts of my assistant, he will explain our position to you in court.
- We will send the contract first, sign it with my friend, with notarization. Under the contract advance payment third. Then let's continue.
— You're a bore, Max. Yes, consider that the contract is in your pocket. I won't be petty about things like that. Here the matter is more important. Like you said, eternity is at stake! See you at my office for contract signing the day after tomorrow.
“Agreed,” Max answered from the phone. I shook hands with a friend and he just as abruptly left, accompanied by a guard.
“I don’t like all this,” I wrote to Max right after the door closed. This guy, he's a bandit, no less. And he wants to throw more of his children to the inheritance.
“That's his right if he's not on good terms with them. And who he is, a bandit or not, I don't care. We need him because he can set a precedent in court for all our bots. And for me! He can win the trial, unlike us.
- It's not fair to win.
- The legislation by which we are judged is dishonest. And you know it. We found in it that I could be recognized as the heir to my rights. But they were still not recognized because of the prejudices of the human judge. In the meantime, they change the law and recognize bots, can you imagine how much time people need for this? You definitely won't live in the body. And this judge, whom he will bribe, will simply speed up the process, there is nothing wrong with that. The truth is on our side.
I don't agree with you, but that's your right. You made the bot.
— Thank you, without you, I can't prove the rights of bots. I can already imagine the paragraph in the history book with your name, Max joked in his style.
The comrade chose a court somewhere in the Urals, in a depressive town, where he had a city-forming plant and the entire administration with government agencies under control. A month later, he unexpectedly got in touch:
- Tell me, what can a bot do in real life? What opportunities will I get if I sign a contract?
- Yes, everything that you can now via the Internet - sign contracts with an electronic signature, dispose of property, contact government agencies through the public services portal, buy on store websites, sell on ad sites, communicate with everyone in the world, even draw pictures in graphic editors and sell them at auctions.
- That is, everything that an ordinary person can do on the network, then a bot can do it. So?
- That's right, you have nothing to worry about, the bot is capable of doing even more than you and I can now as humans.
- Yes, I'm not worried, I need you to show in court that the bot can do everything the same as an ordinary citizen.
We have already tried this argument in court, but could not convince the judge.
— You tried through Article 17 on standing. And there is clearly indicated death as the cause of loss of legal capacity. My lawyers say the defense should be based on Article 21 capacity. Since the bot can perform all the same actions as a living person, we will emphasize the absence of reasons for incapacitation due to the loss of the body. A person does not lose legal capacity due to the loss of an arm, leg, liver, and hence the body. The computer is just a prosthesis. Is the idea clear?
“More than that, great idea, let’s get ready.”
See you in court then. My lawyers will contact you to clarify positions. Don't screw up there, there won't be a second chance. I don't have much longer to live with my disease.
After being transferred to the bot and passing all the tests, it was decided to kill the hopelessly ill body of a comrade. And a court was appointed at the suit of his numerous lawyers. The comrade himself spoke at the trial in the form of an animated photograph. This impressed even the invited press. The decision was expected. The court recognized the client's virtual identity as the legal successor of his property rights. The decision spread across the news with incredible speed. We began to receive calls from all over the country, then from other countries. It wasn't just the customers who wanted to transfer their identity to the bot. Politicians, lawyers, academics called, everyone wanted to know how we did it. And there were even threats from religious fans who promised us punishment for the intervention of God's providence.
Congress
We have collected an incredible amount of orders. Clients transferred advances even though we did not promise them to switch to the bot even next year. And, of course, we began to receive numerous offers from investment funds, which have already offered tens of billions for a share in the company.
— Max, more and more clients, although I raised the price to 15 million dollars. The waiting list is already three years old. We can't handle orders. There are not enough specialists, it is necessary to teach the developers themselves. Otherwise, our company will crack from orders. We screw up.
- This is all nonsense, thoughts are more global. I want to convene the first World Congress of Virtual Personalities! How many we have already made virtliches?
“About eight hundred.
- Soon there will be the first thousand, and we will devote the congress to it. In the hall there will be both those who are already in eternity, and those who are going to become a bot. This will be a grandiose action, we will open the era of virtual personalities.
Why do we need this congress? We already have problems with clients, and you want another convention! There is already so much money that you can buy several islands in the Caribbean. What else do you want?
“You’ll see, we’ll get ready,” Max snapped sharply.
On the huge screen of the stage, there were a thousand avatars of bots, which increased in size in turn, so that their faces could be seen. Alive and smiling, although their bodies were buried long ago. In the hall were lawyers, politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs of all stripes, who were preparing to become virtliches. The congress was opened by a professor at an American university. He informed all those present that this is a historic event, the presence of which every participant will be proud of. Then he announced the program of the congress. The very topics of discussion have already spoken about the unusual nature of what is happening. The main topic of several sections at once was the question of the birth of virtlichi only from biological people, which many considered necessary to maintain their connection with people. They did not consider the virtual identity of those who did not experience birth in the flesh. And they cited holy scriptures as arguments. But some were in favor of creating Wirthliches online if needed for some important project. Or even more radical - some considered the Wirthlich a new intelligent life form, not in any way obliged and independent of biological parents. And they advocated the development of this civilization without regard to their ancestors, just as people do not take into account the interests of monkeys in their development. Discussions were also on the topic of the possibility of flight into deep space, opening up for virtlichi, unlike people. They are not afraid of time and do not need oxygen with food on long journeys. At the same time, virtliches represent humanity to the full, in contrast to automated stations. The pathos of the reports was like the first manned flights into space. And of course, there were several sections on the urgent change in the legislation of the countries, and perhaps the UN verdict, which would allow recognizing the legal rights of the Wirtliches.
I liked the theme of one section that with the ability to switch to a bot, people stop being afraid of death. This changes the entire cultural and ethical landscape, since the theme of death has always been a key one for humanity and was the basis for religion through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Now the concept of the soul's transmigration to paradise has been implemented online, and the commandment of the Bible about the resurrection of the dead has become a reality with the advent of the Mission. But so far, all this has been held back by the fact that the technology was not available to everyone. Although this did not deter the speakers' imaginations, everyone understood that everything depended on the will of the company, whose logo towered above the plenary hall stage.
The conference was coming to an end. Finally, at the final general meeting, the professor gave the floor to Max, who began his speech in an unexpectedly solemn voice:
“The technology we created gave a second life to all these personalities. She made a revolution in people's ideas about themselves, proving that a person is a thinking, not a corporeal being. This is the technology that opened the way for us to eternity and deep space. Given this importance, I will declare the technology for creating Wirthliches freely distributed!
There was such silence in the hall, as if the sound was turned off on the TV. But the next moment there was a rumble of chairs under people rising in the hall and the sound of applause with shouts of joy.
“We will open the code for developers of the whole world,” continued Max’s voice from the screen of the congress, breaking through the noise, “We will start a new era in the history of mankind together with you and make the transition to the virtual world a civil right of every biological person. From now on humanity is immortal!
The hall erupted with shouts and applause with renewed vigor, people began to stand on their chairs, hug each other, throw up their badges, briefcases and notebooks. This went on for about twenty minutes, instead of Max's voice some kind of bravura space symphony sounded. I stood at the edge of the stage and so far only felt that some grandiose moment had happened in the life of not only the people rejoicing in the hall. It was no longer Max's idea, but the first living bot on Earth, which had just gone down in history. And I had a sense of belonging to this accomplishment. For the first time, I felt full of meaning and my existence, the absence of which so tormented me. Max took me with him to the future he created.
Epilogue to the series "Another Future".
Source: habr.com
