Artificial and autonomous: a person?

Abstract

Autonomy and personhood are two statuses the law usually ascribes to human beings. But we also ascribe these statuses to nonhuman entities, notably corporations. In this paper I explore the idea of expanding this ascription so as to include a third class of entities: not only humans and corporations but also artificially intelligent beings (artificial agents). I discuss in particular what autonomy and personhood mean, and I consider different ways in which these statuses can be applied to artificial agents, arguing that although computer science and software engineering have yet to develop such agents, a circumstance that makes the whole discussion hypothetical, it still makes sense to discuss these issues, on the assumption that once the former status (autonomy) is built into these agents, the latter status (personhood) will become a more realistic scenario.