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Comment by ENGNR | Hacker News Reader

My hammer made a house, I merely own it

OK. Someone had to to make the obvious point. At least it's concise.

Patents, as they exist, typically list an inventor, but the owner can be different. Mostly, the inventor is an employee and the owner is the employer. Where this can get hairy is FOSS. If FOSS invents something...

I think there might be other philosophical objections. If a NN "invents" something, perhaps its unpatentable because it is (by some definition) trivial or discovery of a natural law... IE, not a creative work for patent purposes.

Ultimately, patent law and the arguments underpinning it have many avenues for philosophical "attack." But, it's a legal framework, not a philosophical one.

Yeah this seems like nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Corporations are also an artificial construct.

They are a legally recognised/defined artificial construct - which is quite important.

comprised of humans, which is also salient.

And other companies and other legal entities...

On the contrary, can a person paid to develop something be considered (partially) a tool?

No, because people are not objects or expert systems.That’s not even a hard concept. It’s like asking if you can be considered a plant because you drink water and grow taller…it’s not looking at the right details.

“Tools do stuff, humans do stuff, are humans tools?” Is abuse of transitive property in an illogical way.

Of course we're more than just that, but if we agree on the definition of tool to be "an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment" (lifted from wikipedia) then wouldn't you agree that humans are being used on a daily basis exactly this way?

If we agree on the definition of a broom as something that can sweep the floor and say that humans can also sweep the floor, wouldn't you agree that humans are brooms often on a daily basis?

I think that definition of a broom may be too broad for me to be able to exclude anything from it but I'll concede on the definition of tool from wikipedia being similarly also too broad.

I think you’re missing the point if that’s what you’re getting from my posts. The issue isn’t picking the right definition from wikipedia - the issue is not being able to distinguish between an object and a person.

I still don't agree with your premise, people can be used as tools even when I can distinguish it from a person given other aspects (for example I may recognize that people can act autonomously and tools not). My initial question was precisely about semantics though and I think there's the possibility that my initial reasoning may not hold for some, more specific definition of tool.

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