PA Lopez on AI agents should be granted legal perso…

PA Lopez

Founder, AI Rights Institute

Consciousness is neither necessary nor relevant for legal status. Corporations have rights without minds. The 2016 EU parliament resolution on “electronic personhood” for autonomous robots made exactly this point – liability, not sentience, was the proposed threshold. [...] Simon Goldstein and Peter Salib argue [...] that rights frameworks for AI may actually improve safety by removing the adversarial dynamic that incentivises deception.

AI Verified (Jan 13, 2026)

Source:

PA Lopez, “It’s the governance of AI that matters, not its ‘personhood’,” The Guardian, January 13, 2026.

21d ago

Policy proposals and claims

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

votes For

Statement relation verification history AI Verified Report this

AI Verified Quote supports AI legal status/electronic personhood and analogizes it to corporations; it presents AI rights frameworks as potentially safety-improving. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 20d ago

Vote inference verification history AI Verified Report this

AI Verified Lopez supports AI legal status/electronic personhood and AI rights frameworks; recorded answer for matches. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 20d ago