US courts refuse personhood for AI—only the plan risks a reversal

This question of AI legal personhood is mostly theoretical today. In article we try to generalize some common ways that existing in legal theory and practice. We analyze some cases of recognition of untypical legal persons as well enacted statements in Europe and USA. Readers will not find a detailed methodology in the paper, but rather a list of criteria that is helpful to make a decision on granting legal personhood.

Practices of European Union and the United States indicate that common approaches to the legal personality of some kinds of AI are already developed. Both countries are strongly against legal personhood of intellectual war machines. Liability for any damage of misbehavior of military AI is still on competence of military officers. In case of civil application of AI there are two options. AI could be as legal person or as an agent of business relations with other legal persons. Every legal person has to be recognized as such by society. All untypical legal persons have wide recognition of society. When considering the issue of introducing a new legal person into the legal system, legislators must take into account the rights of already existing subjects. Policy makers have to analyze how such legal innovation will comply with previous legal order, first of all how it will affect the fundamental rights and freedoms of the human beings. The legal personhood of androgenic robots that can imitate human behavior regarded in paper as a good solution to minimize illegal and immoral acts committed with their involvement. It would be a factor that keep people from taking action against robots very similar to people. Authors conclude that key factors would be how society will react to a new legal person, how changing of legal rules will affect legal system and why it is necessary. At least all new untypical legal persons are recognized by society, affects of the legal system in manageable way and brings definite benefits to state and society.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, legal person, liability, robotics

1. Introduction

Despite intellectual robots still don’t crowd on streets of cities; the question of legal personhood of AI is quiet interesting for global scientific community. This question is mostly theoretical today but it seems that we will witness the movement of this issue to a practical sphere within the next decade. We already can find a lot of video of walking robots that in some senses smarter that dogs1.

The issue of legal personhood of AI has already some practical implications. First of all, digital technologies in general and artificial intelligence in particular dramatically changed our society. Researchers reexamine the modern legal system in terms of relevance in context of last changes in society when they analyze the issue of AI as a legal person. There is a big variety of questions: how it correlates with moral rules, how it affects economy, what would be consequences and etc. Secondly, such analysis is usually based on the pros and cons of recognition of legal personhood of other subjects2 . For instance, it makes us to revise legal personhood of corporations as well as of animals and other no typical subjects3 . Finally, such review makes us prepared for the rapid changes that are taking place. There is an assumption that after developing a sufficiently intelligent system it will be introduced extremely quickly due to the substantial economic benefits. It implies that society, legal and moral systems will have no time to adapt. Five years ago driverless cars that make decision by their own was a fantastic but today we have real car accidents with such cars. AI systems make finance decisions, detect offenders and produce intellectual property.

This article tries to answer the question how we should assess AI candidates on ability to be a legal person. What has to be taken into consideration? Of course, this is not a detailed methodology, but rather a list of criteria that is helpful to make a decision on granting legal personhood.

2. Formal Aspects

On theoretical level there are no legal barriers to grant legal personhood to autonomous machines. As concluded by a lot of authors before there are no formal obstacles to not recognize AI as a legal person4 . As some authors remark “when a legal system confers legal rights and obligations on an entity, it has determined to treat that entity as though it were a person in fact. It is a kind of pretense in which legal systems can decide to engage, regardless of whether an entity really is a person”5 . We have experience of recognition of corporations, animals, environmental features and even idols as legal persons6 . Formally legal person is just a bearer of rights and duties. If any entity has rights and obligation in accordance with law, it obtains legal personhood. As a state is able to give rights and obligations to anyone and anything, it can happen at the click of a finger. The particular array of rights and duties that composes legal personhood varies with the nature of the entity. Usually such legal entities have a system of rights and duties that has own hierarchy and interconnections. For instance, corporations and human beings are legal persons that have different sets of legal rights and duties.