Some say artificial intelligence will be humanity’s greatest helper. Others warn that AI will become humanity’s most dangerous rival. But maybe there’s a third alternative — with AI agents achieving the status of personhood alongside their human brethren.
The potential for that scenario is the focus of a newly published book titled “The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood.” The author, Duke University law professor James Boyle, says the book has been more than a decade in the making — which suggests more than the usual prescience about the tech world’s current fascination with AI.
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, he recalls the reaction he received when he shared his early ideas about the book with federal judges more than a dozen years ago..
“They’re like, ‘Rights are reserved for humans, naturally born of women!’ OK, well, not necessarily a great crowd,” says Boyle, founder of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. “Obviously, things have changed since then. The book seems perhaps less unhinged now than it did then.”
