Cory Doctorow on AI agents should be granted legal perso…

Cory Doctorow

Author and digital rights activist

a chatbot is definitely more like a corporation than it is like a watershed. [...] giving rights to chatbots means taking away rights from nature

AI Verified source (Apr 15, 2026)

3mo ago

Policy proposals and claims

AI agents should be granted legal personhood as non-human corporations

votes Against

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AI Verified Verified: in context, Doctorow is arguing against extending personhood or rights to chatbots. He frames chatbot personhood as analogous to the harmful expansion of corporate personhood, says Pollan urged people to turn away from it, and ends by rejecting empathy-based rights for “human constructs.” That clearly implies opposition to granting AI agents legal personhood as non-human corporations. ([doctorow.medium.com](https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-15-artificial-lifeforms-moral-consideration-74c10b33bf7a)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Verified Against: he says a chatbot is "more like a corporation" and that "giving rights to chatbots" would take rights from nature; in the article, corporate personhood is presented as disastrous and readers are urged to "turn away" from extending personhood to chatbots, so the author is opposing legal personhood for AI agents. ([doctorow.medium.com](https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-15-artificial-lifeforms-moral-consideration-74c10b33bf7a)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Verified Verified: the cited Medium post "Rights for robots" is by Cory Doctorow and dated Apr 15, 2026, and it contains the exact wording underlying this quote: "a chatbot is definitely more like a corporation than it is like a watershed" and later in the same sentence, "giving rights to chatbots means taking away rights from nature." The user’s "[...]" is a legitimate omission between verbatim fragments. The same text also appears on Doctorow’s Pluralistic post from April 15, 2026. ([doctorow.medium.com](https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-15-artificial-lifeforms-moral-consideration-74c10b33bf7a)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

replying to Cory Doctorow

Other opinions from Cory Doctorow

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Cory Doctorow votes Against

AI will create more jobs than it destroys

The financing for new models is coming from investors, and those investors are making a bet that the AI they're funding will be so good that employers can fire half their workers and replace them with AI, with the proceeds split between AI companies'...

more AI Verified source (Jun 23, 2026)

added 3mo ago

Cory Doctorow votes Against

Grant individuals the right to opt out of being included in AI training data

If we create a new right to control training, that will not give creative workers control over AI training... It will give our bosses control over AI training, because they will amend our standard contracts to demand that we sign away our training ri...

more AI Verified source (Jun 23, 2026)

added 3mo ago

Cory Doctorow votes For

Grant developers the right to interoperate with large platforms without permission

Thanks to copyright restrictions that criminalize modifying apps without permission, there is no legal way for either drivers or riders to build comparison-shopping dashboards that bid out the same worker or job to multiple apps and choose from the c...

more AI Verified source (Jun 23, 2026)

added 3mo ago