AI as a Legal Person

Abstract

The idea of the legal personhood of artificial intelligence (AI) --- the idea that intelligent agents can have rights and incur obligations under the law--- is controversial, and in fact is often dismissed out of hand: in this paper I will argue that, on the contrary, such legal personhood may be the next big challenge for our legal systems, and we need it to deal with the new kinds of complexity introduced by AI. Furthermore, I argue that we already have experiences we can look: to this end we can draw on the reasoning applied to the legal personhood recognized for corporations and other nonhuman entities. In order to do this, I address some of the criticisms against ascribing legal personhood to AI. I also look at the Canadian and EU ethical guidelines so as to keep the development of AI within the framework of human values, and I show that an ascription of legal personhood to AI is consistent with them. I also address a few of the big issues involved in making the legal personhood of AI a reality.