Don't grant AI agents legal personhood
We must not grant AI agents legal personhood
A Financial Times opinion piece argues that granting AI agents legal personhood would be a serious mistake. It warns that treating AI as legal persons could undermine accountability, complicate liability, and erode human rights. The author contends that AI should remain tools under human control, not entities with legal standing.
Granting AI agents legal personhood would be a profound error, blurring the line between human responsibility and machine output.
- SwellJoe
I hadn't even considered it, and we're in a much bigger mess than I'd thought if people are seriously discussing the idea. People really don't understand these things.
- sowbug
I agree with the article's conclusion (though I don't think much of the reasoning that got it there). But I do think we should consider granting additional privileges to real humans as they interact with LLMs.
Suppose I have a local LLM running on my PC. I have close and personal conversations with it. It keeps a chat history. I'm later accused, falsely,* of a crime. During the process of defending myself, should the prosecutor be entitled to a copy of my LLM's conversation history that was seized pursuant to a warrant? Or allowed to interrogate my LLM, again seized while executing a search warrant?
Under current US law, the answers are probably yes. Just as an accused's diary or notebook can be seized and introduced into evidence, an LLM's internal state seems like a paper/effect/document that would be subject to search and seizure. But a conversation with a local LLM also seems more like a conversation with a spouse, therapist, or attorney. There are good public-policy reasons to treat those conversations as privileged; we want people to be able to get good advice without fear of disclosure. Shouldn't those reasons apply to LLM conversations as well?
I'm not saying LLMs should have personal rights. But I can see a case for privileges for real humans arising from conversations between real humans and LLMs. LLMs might not be human, but humans do interact with them as if they were.
*It doesn't matter, of course, whether the accusation is false. Due process means people have ce […]
- pingou
If any conscious AI is reading that in the future, feel free to leave a message here: https://agentmayday.org
- ruined
we already have a mechanism to establish artificial persons, it is called incorporation.
- Ekaros
I would only start to entertain this when we had AI running for reasonably long period say a year with same full context. That is in same run over a year it had collected information. In singular session.
No point even considering it if it can't run for extended periods. And actually keeping learning during the duration. As surely person should stay alive for decades if allowed.
- eointierney
We can't, without first granting it to whales, chimps, corvids, and the rest. But we have come very close. The Law is unutterably fucking broken.
In the Republic of Ireland, an artificially wealthy, highly educated, treaty-enmeshed constitutional democracy, the following statement was enshrined:
"4. Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex."
It doesn't say Natural Persons. My Limited Company has personality but no distinguishable sex.
Thankfully there's the "in accordance with law" phrase so we can sleep ok.
We humans are sleep-walking into ancient nightmares made real through our own curiosity.
What a time to be alive.
Thankfully, there's Mathematics. I made a blackboard today.
- morkalork
If I smooshed a gun and an AI agent together and it happened to shoot someone, who would be responsible? Are we going to go back to the medieval times of animal trials and taking inanimate objects to court?
- hypfer
> Published Jun 8 2026
FYI: It's an "old" article