5 - Personality

Summary

As AI systems operate with greater autonomy, the idea that they might themselves be held responsible has gained credence. On its face, the idea of giving those systems a form of independent legal personality may seem attractive. Yet this chapter argues that this is both too simple and too complex. It is simplistic in that it lumps a wide range of technologies together in a single, ill-suited legal category; it is overly complex in that it implicitly or explicitly embraces the anthropomorphic fallacy that AI systems will eventually assume full legal personality in the manner of the ‘robot consciousness’ arguments mentioned earlier in the book. Though the emergence of general AI is a conceivable future scenario – and one worth taking precautions against – it is not a sound basis for regulation today.