The EU’s legal affairs committee is walking blindfold into a swamp if it thinks that “electronic personhood” will protect society from developments in AI (Give robots ‘personhood’, say EU committee, 13 January). The analogy with corporate personhood is unfortunate, as this has not protected society in general, but allowed owners of companies to further their own interests – witness the example of the Citizens United movement in the US, where corporate personhood has been used as a tool for companies to interfere in the electoral process, on the basis that a corporation has the same right to free speech as a biological human being.

Electronic personhood will protect the interests of a few, at the expense of the many. As soon as rules of robotic personhood are published, the creators of AI devices will “adjust” their machines to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity – not because these people are evil but because that is part of the logic of any commercial activity.

Just as corporate personhood has been used in ways that its original proponents never expected, so the granting of “rights” to robots will have consequences that we cannot fully predict – to take just two admittedly futuristic examples, how could we refuse a sophisticated robot the right to participate in societal decision-making, ie to vote? And on what basis could we deny an intelligent machine the right to sit on a jury?

Paul Griseri

La Genetouze, France

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