Story Idea

[packbat]

1. True AI is fairly new - perhaps as new as the Internet is now.
2. At some point early on, it has been established that AIs are legal persons.
3. An AI breaks the law in a way that would normally confer the death penalty.
4. Its sentence: to be reprogrammed - not killed - so that it will not do it again.

The story follows the hacker or hackers employed to do the job.

Comments

Speculation...

[feech.livejournal.com]

How/why has it been determined that True AI are legal persons? If they can be reprogrammed to determine their inability to repeat a certain action, why isn't the person who programmed them in the first place also responsible for the initial action, to the extent that this would be punishable by law if a human being were behind or involved in conspiracy leading to criminal activities of others?

(My first thought, though, when I saw "death penalty" and "employed to do the job", was that, for the rest of the story and beyond, the AI sits on Reprogram Row while a series of appeals delays proceedings and seriously ties up the budget.)