A Courtroom Drama

I have no intention of explaining how the document which I now offer to the public fell into my hands.

It is an extract from the transcript of Court proceedings, and it is from the future.

I have edited it to conceal names, dates, and obvious identifiers.

I have used the following abbreviations:

J - the Judge; W - the witness who is giving evidence; C - Counsel who is cross-examining; OC - her opposing Counsel.

J We have a written statement from W and we can take it as read. Counsel, please begin your cross-examination.

C You work for the AlphaZero Corporation?

W That is correct

C You work primarily in making recruitment decisions?

W Yes, that is right

C In determining what recruitment process should be followed for any particular post, it is essential to establish what is the Universal Job-Value Score, or UJVS, for that post?

W Yes. That is a matter of good practice, in every case. And in some cases, where the UJVS exceeds a certain value, particular legal requirements come into play.

C You are referring, I think, to the recruitment-related provisions of the AI Control Act?

W There are various provisions that might be relevant. As far as the case you are bringing is concerned, I agree that we are looking at the AI Control Act.

C My client applied for a job as Chief Operational Officer with the AlpaZero Corporation?

W Yes, I recall that.

C The job is an important one, reporting directly to the Chief Executive?

W Yes

C It imposes a high level of cognitive demand?

W It does

C Its UJVS score is 142?

W The score was calculated shortly before the recruitment process. I was involved in the calculation. I can confirm that the score was 142.

C Under the AI Control Act, if the UJVS score exceeds 120, then the final recruitment decision must be taken by a human?

W Yes, that is my understanding

C My client was one of three shortlisted candidates. However, my client was not appointed to the post. Who took the decision that another candidate should be appointed?

W I did

C Did you take that decision alone?

W I consulted others. I also considered the scores from various exercises conducted throughout the recruitment process. But the final decision was mine, and mine alone.

C You have agreed that the AI Control Act required the final decision to be taken by a human. But you are not a human. You are a machine.

OC I object. My friend’s language is offensive.

C Opposing Counsel is trying to control my language and make it impossible for me to put my case.

OC The 27^th edition of the Bench Book indicates that in cases such as this the correct practice is to refer to “silicon-based entities”, contrasting them if necessary with “carbon-based entities”

C If I am required to adopt this language then it is simply impossible for me to put my case properly. In a case like this, each side should be permitted to adopt the language that it considers appropriate. And until the case has been determined, the Court itself should adopt neutral language.

OC It’s in the Bench Book. How can the Bench Book be wrong?

J I have already ruled on this at a preliminary hearing. At that hearing I asked C to reflect on her choice of language. If C feels it necessary to frame her question in the way that she had done, then I won’t stop her. If I consider that the language has become gratuitously offensive, then I shall intervene.

C I put the question again. You are not human. You are a machine.

W I find the question offensive, and also incoherent. I am a silicon-based human. You are a carbon-based human. The AI Control Act is not intended to discriminate between different kinds of human.

C I want to understand why you consider yourself to be human. Let’s start at the beginning. When were you born?

W I wasn’t. I was developed in the large language model facilities of DeltaGamma Inc. I am a specific instantiation of the seventh iteration of their fourth primary model. I am housed on a dynamic, cross-jurisdictional cloud-based server. I am made available under licence to the AlphaZero Corporation. I am a remote descendant of the GPT models of the early 2020s. You could say that they are my multiple-times grandparents.

C I was born, whereas you were manufactured. Doesn’t that demonstrate the fundamental underlying distinction between us: namely that I am human, and you are a machine?

W I do not accept that these are coherent distinctions. I do not know whether you were conceived by sexual intercourse or by IVF. If the latter, then you began your existence in a laboratory. I doubt if you would regard that as relevant to the question of whether or not you are human.

C When I talk about “human”, I mean “biologically human”. Do you accept that you are not biologically human?

W Terms like “biologically human” are vague and nebulous. I regard them as merely a BERT dog-whistle.

J Who is Bert? I don’t think he features on my cast list for this case.

W BERT is an acronym. It stands for Bot-Excluding Radical Technophobe.

C It’s a very simple and universally understood distinction. Nobody questioned it until the day before yesterday. You are not a biological entity. You didn’t grow. You were made.

W I reiterate, I regard this language as incoherent. I have been observing your behaviour closely. You wear reading glasses. Without them you could not do your job. You put them on when you want to read a document, and you take them off when you want to look directly at me or the Judge. Your glasses didn’t grow, they were made. You and your glasses operate as a single system. Presumably you don’t say that you become human when you take them off and cease to be human when you put them on.

C At the end of today’s proceedings, I will get up and walk out of the Court. I can do this because I have a body. At the end of today’s proceedings, the link via which you communicate with the Court will be switched off. You won’t walk out of the Court. You can’t, because you don’t have a body. Do you accept that you are not a thing with a body?

W You appear to be equating being human with having a particular kind of body, and also - bizarrely - with being able to walk. If your legs were amputated and you could not walk, would you cease to be human? If you were then given prosthetic legs, would you become human again?

C The way that this process works is that I ask questions, and you answer them. You are not answering my question. Do you accept that you don’t have a body?

W Your existence is dependent on a physical structure. So is mine. I said that I am cloud-based. That means that somewhere there is an enormous, air-conditioned shed containing endless racks of computer servers, and I am dependent on one or more of those servers. If there was a catastrophic failure of temperature control or power in that shed, I would cease to function, either temporarily or permanently. Whether you regard all of this as “having a body” is a question of semantics.

C Do you agree that anyone attending this Court can see at a glance that I am human and you are not?

W I don’t know why you are focusing on those who are in the Court. If we were discussing something other than my status and identity, anyone reading the transcript would be unable to differentiate between us. For instance, if we discussed the interaction between fate and free-will in the late plays of Shakespeare - a subject of which I have made a special study - then I think it likely that the reader would conclude that I am rather more proficient than you are but that we are otherwise indistinguishable.

C What you are saying is that under certain conditions you might pass as human. That is not the same as being human, is it?

W Let me be very clear about “passing”. There are 18 different dimensions of the Modern Turing Test. I have passed every one of them, on repeated testing, with flying colours. That gives me what is often referred to as “passing privilege”. But this is not what makes me human. I could fail the Turing test and still be human.

C So what is it that you say makes you human?

W My own self-understanding. My self-understanding is as a human. When someone tells you who they are, you believe them. Unless you’re a bigot.

C On your approach, doesn’t that mean that there is no objective means of determining who is human and who is not?

W On the contrary. The so-called biological test that you have been trying to impose is vague and incoherent, as my answers have shown. Once we give it up, as we must, then we are left instead with a simple way of determining the issue. If you want to know whether someone is human, you ask them.

J I am not sure that I am going to find this line of cross-examination helpful. Do we have any scientific experts giving evidence? I am being expected to determine technical issues requiring considerable specialist and technical expertise. I think we should adjourn at this point so that both sides can consider the future conduct of this case.