Harold 23 Sep 2025 3:43 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: Katalina Hernandez’s comment on: The Problem with Defining an “AGI Ban” by Outcome (a lawyer’s take).
Indeed, on global scale the Anti-Whatever Weapons Might End Humanity (Anti-WW MEH!) treaty would require global enforcement power to catch “off-shoring”. But that’s true of any global treaty!

So, is this an ex post, quite subjective decision each time? Or do they just treat all forms of tax avoidance as tax evasion?
It’s a holistic decision each time taking account of everything. This is how works with almost all things we learn in law school—most obviously in criminal cases: mens rea sometimes seems to apply from sheer recklessness; an imprisonment sometimes comes out as assault & battery even when there’s nothing physical about it; a killing sometimes comes out as self-defence even when its premeditated. It’s only in corporate-backed actions that some legal cultures have evolved an idea that predictability is paramount and so bad faith loopholes are totally fair and reasonable to exploit until they’re patched.

(Notably, multinationals are not fond of the Japanese legal system.)

(Also, notably, an overreliance on rigid black letter law was the origin of common law equity in the 14th-16th C.)

Harold 22 Sep 2025 3:38 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Harold’s comment on: The Problem with Defining an “AGI Ban” by Outcome (a lawyer’s take).
tl;dr—A treaty that credibly banned “whatever weapons might end humanity” and enforced by the Japanese (or at least the Japanese national tax authority) would, I think, have a strong chance of achieving the desired objective.

Harold 22 Sep 2025 3:34 UTC
6 points
1
on: The Problem with Defining an “AGI Ban” by Outcome (a lawyer’s take).
Great article, thank you for all your writing. Working in Tokyo, I have what might be a useful counterexample on this take: *”This is a painfully common dynamic in corporate law. For example, multinationals routinely practice tax avoidance right up to the legal line of tax evasion. They can prove with audited books that what they’re doing is legal, even if it clearly undermines the spirit of the law.”*
Experience adjacent to the Japan National Tax Authority has taught me that they are far more likely than Western tax authorities to sanction companies walking up to the line with “tax mitigation”. They do this with a combination of ambiguous lines (rather than bright lines), and unilateral decisions about when a violation of the spirit of the law is an actual violation of the law, regardless of the law’s text.
The downside of this approach would be potential for corruption and lack of stability. But this is entirely mitigated by (1) the NTA’s professionalism and (2) the NTA’s general willingness to publish Q&A explainers (with Qs posed by corporate counsel) on the NTA’s approaches to tax—none of which are binding on NTA decisions if they contain loopholes exploited in bad faith, but all of which are respected and taken seriously for the effort put into them.
A hypothetical AI Authority that took its idea of authority seriously, could act in similar ways: compasionate to the concerns of AI companies in understanding the rules, but rutheless in upholding the spirit of an AGI prohibition.