Granting powerful artificial agents personhood will be less of a social problem (they can fend for themselves) than personhood of minimal agents. On whatever criteria we agree, it can likely be used to engineer minimal agents. Agents that are just barely aware of being agents but have little computational capability beyond that. What if somebody puts these into a device? Can the device no longer be turned of? Copied? Modified?
Granting powerful artificial agents personhood will be less of a social problem (they can fend for themselves) than personhood of minimal agents. On whatever criteria we agree, it can likely be used to engineer minimal agents. Agents that are just barely aware of being agents but have little computational capability beyond that. What if somebody puts these into a device? Can the device no longer be turned of? Copied? Modified?