A—AI Rights spill over—also turns aff because of anti-AI backlash

Even so, any sort of legal personhood for AIs would be a dramatic legal change that could prove problematic.225 As discussed earlier, providing legal personality to AI could result in increased anthropomorphisms. People anthropomorphizing AI expect it to adhere to social norms and have higher expectations regarding AI capabilities.226 This is problematic where such expectations are inaccurate and the AI is operating in a position of trust. Especially for vulnerable users, such anthropomorphisms could result in “cognitive and psychological damages to manipulability and reduced quality of life.”227 These outcomes may be more likely if AI were held accountable by the state in ways normally reserved for human members of society. Strengthening questionable anthropomorphic tendencies regarding AI could also lead to more violent or destructive behavior directed at AI, such as vandalism or attacks.228 Further, punishing AI could also affect human well-being in less direct ways, such as by producing anxiety about one’s own status within society due to the perception that AIs are given a legal status on a par with human beings.

Finally, and perhaps most worryingly, conferring legal personality on AI may lead to rights creep, or the tendency for an increasing number of rights to arise over time.229 Even if AIs are given few or no rights initially when they are first granted legal personhood, they may gradually acquire rights as time progresses. Granting legal personhood to AI may thus be an important step down a slippery slope. In a 1933 Supreme Court opinion, for instance, Justice Brandeis warned about rights creep, and argued that granting corporations an excess of rights could allow them to dominate the State.230 Eighty years after that decision, Justice Brandeis’ concerns were prescient in light of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, which significantly expanded the rights extended to corporations.231 Such rights, for corporations and AI, can restrict valuable human activities and freedoms.