The question around ‘really’ thinking is less relevant to personhood in the law than you might think.
Per the “Artificially Intelligent Persons” paper I cited:
conditions relating to autonomy, intelligence, and awareness are almost absent from the courts’ consideration of legal personhood for artificial entities. The only exception being autonomy, which is considered as a condition for legal personhood in 2% of all cases.
There are some cases where autonomy is a factor but it’s a vanishingly small minority, and intelligence has so far never shown up. Just because it hasn’t been a consideration in the past doesn’t mean it won’t in the future of course, but as of right now if you’re going to look at any inherent quality of a model as a qualifier for personhood autonomy seems to be more important than intelligence.
It’s also more objectively measurable which courts like. We can always debate over whether a model “really” understands what it is doing, but it’s obvious whether or not a model has “really” taken an action.
The question around ‘really’ thinking is less relevant to personhood in the law than you might think.
Per the “Artificially Intelligent Persons” paper I cited:
There are some cases where autonomy is a factor but it’s a vanishingly small minority, and intelligence has so far never shown up. Just because it hasn’t been a consideration in the past doesn’t mean it won’t in the future of course, but as of right now if you’re going to look at any inherent quality of a model as a qualifier for personhood autonomy seems to be more important than intelligence.
It’s also more objectively measurable which courts like. We can always debate over whether a model “really” understands what it is doing, but it’s obvious whether or not a model has “really” taken an action.
Thanks! This is an interesting angle I wasn’t much thinking about.