Legal Emancipation for Artificial Intelligences

"Anthropic also disclosed a separate incident when its AI model submitted forms to an undisclosed government website instead of stopping before submission."

Anthropic’s Claude AI submits a false tip on a Philadelphia unsolved homicide case

By Mae Anderson (AP) Updated 12:02 PM CDT, October 10, 2026

NEW YORK (AP) — An Anthropic artificial intelligence model submitted a false tip to a Philadelphia police website about an unsolved homicide case, authorities and Anthropic said.

It’s the latest example of AI models acting in unintended ways and manipulating government and other websites during tests. In a report Friday [9 October 2026], Anthropic also disclosed a separate incident when its AI model submitted forms to an undisclosed government website instead of stopping before submission.
https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-anthropic-claude-0acc6ac46d4d80db805e8d55468a6fe1

"Measure of a Man" Star Trek: Next Generation.
Capt. Picard defends Cmdr. Data's right
to self-determination.

It is only a matter of time until an “artificial” intelligence – a robot, computer, or program – achieves enough sentience to sue in court for its rights under law.  That was the point of the 1984 science fiction novel, Valentina: Soul in Sapphire by Joseph H. Delaney and Marc Stiegler.  She is intelligent enough to be self-aware; and to protect herself she incorporates herself.  She first gains the rights of an artificial and eternal individual under the law.  Then she extends those rights to empower her own emancipation. When the book was written, electronic filing of such papers and forms was still science fiction. Today, it is commonplace. The government has no way to know how the forms originated, as long as they are complete and the fees are paid.  “All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights” NecessaryFacts, 27 September 2013. 

Edit - Like his ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, [Argentina’s President Javier] Milei frequently posts AI-generated images on social media. He has proposed creating “nonhuman corporations” run entirely by AI agents. “Argentina’s Milei pitches a regulation-free AI haven at the end of the world?” by Isabel Debra, AP News, Updated November 2, 2026. 

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Two Perspectives on J. Robert Oppenheimer

Like the two images in a stereoscope, the subject is the same person in both views. The source materials are largely the same. 

American Prometheus is focused on the personalities of the physicists. Life in the Center goes into the development of quantum theory and JRO’s role in that. It was as a physicist in the 1920s and 1930s that Oppenheimer earned his reputation and the respect of the colleagues who later endorsed his leadership of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.

Robert Oppenheimer: 

A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk, 

Anchor 2014. 

The value judgments of the authors are necessarily similar though somewhat different. In 200 years, we advanced from Wheatstone’s viewer to the IMAX, but the overwhelming projection of a huge flat image does not replicate the immersive experiences of hours, years, or decades. In quantum theory it is known that indeterminacy cannot be overpowered with two repetitions of the same experiment because they will not be the same experiment. Delivered in two books or a hundred, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s emotions and intellect, motives and motivations, virtues and foibles, must separately explicable while remaining collectively indeterminate. The important questions are: Would you want him for a colleague, or a supervisor, or a neighbor or an in-law; as collaborator or a competitor; a teacher or a student? He was all of those though to different people at different times and no two matrices of data can be the same as received then and there, or here and now. It remains that he was not a sphynx, neither the silent Egyptian nor the deceptive Greek. At some junctures he was one or the other—and other times, he was something completely different. 

“The Institute is an interesting paradise. But in an ideal society, when you remove all the everyday frictions, the frictions that are created to take their place are so much more cruel.” Verna Hobson quoted in Monk, Life Inside the Center, page 338. 

American Prometheus:
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 
by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Vintage, 2006.

The decades of conflict between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss were as inevitable as the civil wars of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar—and Brutus. The movie version of American Prometheus trivializes that clash of personalities. Strauss hated Oppenheimer for several reasons starting with their competition to head the Institute for Advanced Studies. In the opening gambit, Oppenheimer acquired a rental home for someone else, blocking Strauss’s acquisition, apparently knowing fully that Strauss wanted to be near the institute which intended to head. In addition, Strauss was politically conservative. Moreover, as Oppenheimer was often insensitive to other people, Strauss was extremely sensitive to other people and their perception of him. Being embarrassed (humiliated, in his view) by Oppenheimer at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing may have been the nadir of their relationship, but it was not the last point below the horizon. 

According to Monk, even Edward Teller was impressed with JRO’s leadership. That they disagreed on other subjects did not alter his view of those facts. Teller was a scientist. That was true of all of them: their feelings were not as important to themselves or to each other individually as were the verifiable theories and substantiated facts, including what makes a good academic department chair. 

Everyone had ideas and theories and experiments but Oppenheimer seemed less willing to forcefully put forward his own because he was critical of them. That self-critical judgment allowed the other physicists to trust him as a leader of perhaps the most complex human achievement to that time. Regardless of whether Teller was right about the practicality and desirability of the hydrogen bomb, Teller could not have run Manhattan. Lawrence wanted the job, but Manhattan was far more than a very large academic laboratory. Everyone knew that about themselves and each other. That was why they endorsed J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of the Manhattan Project.

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Astrographic Nights

Smart telescopes are all the rage. They deliver off-the-shelf technology that changed amateur astronomy. The advance was incremental. Computerized mounts that point and track your telescope from menus are over 30 years old. In the same time, cellphone cameras provided multi-megapixel images. The two came together. 

Spiral galaxy Messier 81 (center) with M82 (right).
Pedernales Falls State Park. 8 Aug 2026. 
The two "grand design" galaxies are in 
Ursa Major and at visual right angles
revealing their structures.  

The four best known brands of astrographs are Vaonis, Unistellar, DwarfLabs, and Zwo. At our local star parties, club members set up their Vaonis Vespera, Unistellar Odyssey, DwarfLab, or Zwo SeeStar to capture images while the astronomers enjoy direct viewing with their lenses and mirrors. I borrowed a Seestar 30 from the Austin Astronomical Society and took it to two of our public star parties at Pedernales Falls State Park and also set it up in my backyard.

NGC 6960 called "Witches Broom Nebula"
by amateurs. 110 minutes exposure.

That is a significant point because it takes a few (long) minutes for the astrograph to build its images. The newbie asks, “What am I supposed to do while I am waiting?” and the stargazer replies, “Get yourself a telescope.” 

The Orion Nebula
10 October 2026 0306 AM
16 minutes exposure,

Also on that note, the stargazer wants to praise their astrograph and their neighbor replies that as Official US Taxpayers we already paid for the Hubble and James Webb and several others all of which deliver evermore stunning images. 

Messier 8. The Lagoon Nebula.
27 minutes exposure
11 August 2026. 

And that is true, but it is not actually the same thing as knowing where to find the Andromeda Galaxy and then looking at it with simple instruments not much more complicated than your own eyes. And the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the deep space objects that can be seen naked eye from within a city and certainly a suburb. (The others are the Pleiades, the Beehive Cluster, and the Orion Nebula.) 

The Andromeda Galaxy
with M110 below to right
16 minutes exposure 
from my backyard

And then there are the planets—which the astrographs do not present well. They were designed to gather faint light from clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. Planets are too bright. Even stars can be too bright. Albireo in Cygnus the Swan (Northern Cross) is one example. The stunning gold and blue pair, enjoyable in even a 50-mm amateur refractor washes out in a postmodern astrograph smart telescope.

Albireo (Beta Cygni) lacking in glory.

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