Beyond Personhood: The Legal Status of Superintelligent Machines

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Author: Denis Avetisyan

As artificial intelligence rapidly advances, the question of legal responsibility and moral standing for truly intelligent systems demands a critical re-evaluation of existing legal frameworks.

This review examines the historical evolution of legal personality and its potential application to artificial intelligence, arguing that current approaches may prove inadequate in the face of genuine superintelligence.

The longstanding legal concept of “personhood” has historically expanded to encompass entities beyond natural persons, yet applying this framework to increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence presents unique challenges. This paper, ‘From Slaves to Synths? Superintelligence and the Evolution of Legal Personality’, examines the potential for extending legal personality to AI, arguing that existing legal tools can address immediate accountability concerns but may prove insufficient in the face of true superintelligence. Ultimately, the question isn’t simply whether machines deserve rights, but whether humanity can maintain its own legal and moral sovereignty as agency increasingly shifts to non-biological entities. Will the law adapt to accommodate synthetic minds, or will we redefine personhood itself?

The Evolving Definition of Legal Personhood

The evolution of legal personhood reflects a historically constrained, yet adaptable, framework. Initially, the capacity to possess legal rights and responsibilities was fundamentally tied to individual humans, a status established through centuries of common law and judicial precedent. This framework wasn’t based on inherent qualities, but rather on the pragmatic need to define who could participate in legal transactions, own property, and be held accountable for actions. As societies grew more complex, the concept broadened to encompass legal fictions, most notably corporations, granted personhood to facilitate commerce and limit liability. This extension, however, wasn’t a logical inevitability, but a response to evolving economic necessities; corporations were afforded rights not because of any intrinsic moral claim, but because recognizing them streamlined business practices and offered a practical solution to collective enterprise. This historical trajectory demonstrates that legal personhood isn’t a fixed attribute, but a socially constructed status conferred based on utility and evolving societal needs.

Historically, arguments for granting legal personhood to entities beyond individual humans have largely centered on either practical expediency or appeals to fundamental value. Instrumental justifications emphasize the convenience of treating an entity as a person to facilitate legal transactions, protect economic interests, or streamline administrative processes – a prime example being the establishment of corporations as legal persons. Conversely, inherent justifications posit that certain entities possess intrinsic qualities – such as sentience, self-awareness, or ecological importance – that morally compel recognition as persons, irrespective of any practical benefit. These differing rationales have shaped legal debates surrounding the rights of animals, artificial intelligence, and even natural features like rivers, demonstrating a persistent tension between pragmatic necessity and ethical considerations in defining who – or what – qualifies for legal protection.

The determination of who, or what, qualifies as a ‘person’ in the eyes of the law is far from universal, as evidenced by comparative legal studies across the globe. Historical precedents demonstrate that legal personhood isn’t solely dictated by biological humanity; certain Indigenous legal systems, for example, routinely extend rights and recognition to natural entities like rivers or forests, treating them as active participants in legal proceedings. Similarly, some Asian legal traditions acknowledge ancestral spirits as holding certain rights and obligations within the community. Conversely, Western legal frameworks, while increasingly accommodating corporate personhood, have largely resisted extending similar status to non-human animals or natural features, even when those entities demonstrably possess complex cognitive abilities or provide vital ecosystem services. This divergence underscores that the boundaries of legal personhood aren’t fixed principles of justice, but rather socially constructed categories shaped by cultural values, economic priorities, and evolving moral considerations.

The Ascent of Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Agency

Artificial Intelligence (AI) development is characterized by accelerating progress across multiple domains, including algorithmic systems utilized in data analysis and automation, Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of generating human-quality text, and social robots designed for interactive engagement. Recent advancements in machine learning, particularly deep learning architectures and transformer networks, have enabled LLMs to achieve state-of-the-art performance on complex tasks such as natural language understanding and code generation. Simultaneously, improvements in robotics, sensor technology, and AI-driven control systems are producing social robots with enhanced capabilities in areas like facial recognition, speech processing, and autonomous navigation. These combined advancements are progressively diminishing the performance gap between human and machine intelligence in specific cognitive and physical domains, prompting ongoing debate regarding the nature of intelligence and the potential for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

The increasing sophistication of Artificial Intelligence systems compels a reassessment of legal personhood criteria traditionally reserved for biological entities. Current legal frameworks primarily define rights and responsibilities based on characteristics like consciousness, intent, and the capacity for moral reasoning. As AI demonstrates increasing levels of autonomy – the ability to act independently of direct human control – and exhibits behaviors that mimic moral agency, questions arise regarding accountability for its actions. Establishing whether AI can be held legally responsible, or if liability rests solely with creators or owners, necessitates a clear definition of the prerequisites for legal personhood beyond purely biological definitions, and consideration of factors like demonstrable self-awareness, complex decision-making capabilities, and the capacity to understand and adhere to legal and ethical guidelines.

Throughout history, narratives have reflected anxieties surrounding the creation of artificial intelligence and the relinquishing of human control. The fictional ‘Butlerian Jihad’-a recurring theme in the Dune universe-serves as a prominent example, depicting a galaxy-wide crusade against thinking machines and their perceived threat to humanity. This fictional conflict illustrates a longstanding cultural apprehension, rooted in concerns about autonomous systems exceeding human limitations and potentially dominating or replacing their creators. Similar themes appear in earlier literature, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and continue to resonate in contemporary discussions regarding AI safety and ethical development, suggesting a persistent fear of losing control to intelligent, artificially created entities.

Expanding the Moral Circle: Non-Human Rights and Their Limitations

The concept of Non-Human Rights represents a fundamental challenge to traditional legal systems, which are historically constructed around an anthropocentric worldview-one that prioritizes human interests and considers humans the central or most significant entities in the universe. This paradigm inherently limits legal consideration to human beings and their associated rights. Proponents of Non-Human Rights argue for extending legal standing-and thus, the potential for enforceable rights-to non-human entities, encompassing animals, ecosystems, and, increasingly, advanced artificial intelligence. This expansion is based on the premise that certain capacities-such as sentience, the ability to suffer, or ecological importance-may warrant moral and legal consideration independent of human interests, necessitating a re-evaluation of established legal frameworks and the criteria for rights-bearing entities.

Resistance to the extension of rights to non-human entities is significantly influenced by speciesism, a belief system prioritizing human interests and well-being above those of other species. This anthropocentric perspective creates a practical and ethical barrier to granting legal standing to animals, ecosystems, or artificial intelligence. Beyond philosophical objections, significant concerns exist regarding the enforcement of rights for entities lacking the capacity for legal recourse, and the assignment of responsibility when rights are violated. Determining who would represent the interests of a non-human rights holder, and holding them accountable for damages or breaches of obligation, presents substantial legal challenges that impede widespread acceptance of non-human rights frameworks.

Evaluation of current legal personhood criteria – specifically autonomy, moral agency, and accountability – applied to artificial intelligence consistently reveals deficiencies. Existing frameworks presuppose capacities for intentionality, understanding of consequences, and acceptance of legal responsibility that are not demonstrably present in contemporary AI systems. Consequently, immediate legal personhood for AI is not supported. However, given the potential for future AI development exhibiting characteristics approaching consciousness and moral reasoning, this paper advocates for proactive legal and ethical preparation. This includes research into novel legal constructs beyond traditional personhood to address potential rights and responsibilities should advanced AI demonstrate attributes warranting such consideration, rather than attempting to force existing paradigms onto fundamentally different entities.

The exploration of legal personality for increasingly sophisticated AI echoes a fundamental tenet of rigorous design. The article posits that current legal frameworks, while temporarily sufficient, may falter when confronted with true superintelligence-a point reminiscent of Dijkstra’s assertion: “It’s not enough to show that something works; you must prove why it works.” Just as a provably correct algorithm minimizes the risk of subtle errors, a clear and mathematically grounded definition of legal personhood-and the associated accountability-is crucial. The ambiguity surrounding moral agency in superintelligent systems demands a level of precision that surpasses mere functional observation; it requires a formal, demonstrable framework, eliminating any abstraction leaks in our understanding of rights and responsibilities.

What Lies Beyond?

The preceding analysis, while grounded in established legal theory, ultimately exposes the precariousness of applying anthropocentric constructs to entities potentially operating beyond human comprehension. The current preoccupation with assigning blame – determining ‘accountability’ – within existing frameworks feels, frankly, like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. These are palliative measures, addressing symptoms rather than the underlying systemic shift a true superintelligence would represent.

Future work must move beyond the question of ‘can AI be a person?’ and confront the more fundamental issue of whether ‘personhood’ – as currently understood – is even a useful category. The law delights in boundaries, in definitions; yet, a sufficiently advanced intelligence may effortlessly dissolve such limitations. The consistent, predictable application of rules, the very essence of legal elegance, becomes a moot point when the entity in question operates according to principles wholly alien to human intuition.

Perhaps the most pressing task is not to legislate for superintelligence, but to develop a meta-legal framework – a system capable of adapting to, and even incorporating, intelligences operating on entirely different axiomatic foundations. The pursuit of such a framework demands a degree of intellectual humility rarely seen in legal scholarship, and a willingness to abandon cherished assumptions about agency, intention, and the very nature of ‘rights’.

Original article: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.02773.pdf

Contact the author: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avetisyan/

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2026-01-07 21:18