"ULC" and AI x-risk

I'm going to be quick about the background to this post, as I assume that here if anywhere everybody knows about it. The background is as follows: one worries about AI superintelligence, recursive self-improvement, yadda yadda; one thinks that perhaps we're not as far from the foom as one might wish we were; one worries that the foom might lead to doom; one thinks that it would be nice if everyone would pause development of AI until we are a little more clear about things; but it appears that nobody will pause AI development because there is too much money to be made -- because, among other things, everyone is thinking to themselves, "If I don't develop it, someone else will." I first had this thought about ULC's a few months ago, watching this youtube video with Tristan Harris. And then yesterday came this twitter thread by Jacob Coxon, which Gary Marcus discussed this morning on his substack. But there are of course a hundred different flavors of the idea out there. Tristan Harris seems to think that the only solution to the problem is some massive collective action. Jacob Coxon doesn't seem to have a solution other than to resign his job and call for others to think hard about what they're doing. Gary Marcus is calling for a boycott of AI companies. Other people have talked about firebombing data centers and so on. The ULC is just a different thought, a potential way of thinking about how to address the same problem. Also, I want to be clear that I'm not a doomer of any stripe! The ULC is for those who are more doomerific than myself. OK, so that's the background. ............................................................. What is a ULC? A ULC is exactly like an LLC (a "Limited Liability Corporation") but with two extra letters: "Un." In other words, an ULC would be an Unlimited Liability Corporation. A ULC would expose its CEO, CFO, other decision makers, ... and perhaps others? ... to Unlimited Liability. What would be comprised under Unlimited Liability? Hard to say! One could start with: the loss of all assets of all kinds anywhere in the world. Perhaps one might go further, depending on just how much "U" one wants to put into the ULC: perhaps loss of right to own property in the future? loss of right to enter into contracts? perhaps even loss of right to fair trial? right to life? right not to be tortured? I don't know! The concept of the ULC is slippery, because "unlimited" is hard to parse. Who would want to invest in a ULC? Well, nobody! Who would want to be associated with a ULC? Nobody! So the idea is simple. ULCs do not currently exist. But they could exist. It would be possible to pass a law that such-and-such a corporation has, due to its past bad actions, been designated as a ULC. Anyone who wants to sue the company can go after not only the assets of the company but also the assets of the CEO, CFO, and others (details to be specified in the law). Anyone who can prove in a court of law that the corporation's actions have led directly to the deaths of people close to them can hold the same set of individuals directly responsible for those deaths. Designation as a ULC would of course destroy the corporation. It would as well destroy the lives of those closely associated with it. Designation as a ULC would be a last resort, presumably. It would be the sort of designation that would only be applied to the worst of the worst of the worst. But this is what the AI x-riskers are talking about! Let us say that OpenAI releases an AI into the world that ends up killing a million or fifty million or a billion human beings. In such a world, OpenAI would perhaps be considered for designation with ULC status. If and when ULC status were applied to Open AI, the company's CEO, its CFO, perhaps other top employees -- perhaps all of its employees?, perhaps lawyers who have represented it??, perhaps shareholders??? -- would be subject to Unlimited Liability. And who knows what that might entail. The details would be worked out by the angry survivors of the chaos that the company unleashed. It might get ugly. ............................................................. The point as of today is not to pass any laws about ULC. The point is not even to agitate that people start thinking about passing laws about ULC. The point is to get people to realize that it is possible that in the future things like ULC laws might exist. In the current structure of capitalism, it is easy to form LLCs and C-Corps, and forming those sorts of corporations shields founders and employees from certain consequences. But that structure is not written in stone. It can be changed. People can get angry, and when people get angry they can want to take revenge, and when they want to take revenge is it hard to say just how far things will go. The ULC is just one possible end result. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the idea of the ULC gets a bit of traction, AI executives who are doing their cost-benefit analyses as to whether or not it