> It's what you do with the machine that matters.

The capabilities of a machine matter a lot under law. See current US gun legislation[1], or laws banning export of dual-use technology for examples of laws that have inherent capabilities - not just the use of the thing- as core considerations.

1. It's illegal to possess a new, automatic weapon with some grandfathering prior to 1986

While true, computers in general alreay had the ability to perfectly replicate data, hence blank media tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

I think the reason for all the current confusion is that we previously had two very distince groups of "mind" and "mindless"*, and that led to a lot of freedom for everyone to learn a completly different separation hyperplane between the categories, and AI is now far enough into the middle that for some of us it's on one side and for others of us it's on the other.

* and various other pairs that are no longer synonyms but they used to be; so also "person" vs. "thing", though currently only very few actually think of AI as person-like

Yes, but gun control and dual-use export regulations are both stupid. We need fewer tool-blaming laws, not more.

(Standing by for the inevitable even-goofier analogy comparing AI with privately-owned nuclear arsenals...)