Comment by Gillian Hadfield

Legal scholar and AI governance researcher; Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of AI Alignment and Governance at Johns Hopkins University; Canada CIFAR AI Chair (Vector Institute)
There is a reasonable chance, however, that if the vision for AI agents comes to pass, then for our markets and legal accountability regimes to function effectively, agents will have to have the capacity to sue and be sued directly. This is the definition of legal personhood. [...] If AI agency does evolve in this direction, with a deliberate substantive choice to establish AI agents as legal persons capable of owning property and entering into contracts in their own "name," then clearly this will require a registration scheme that creates a public and formal record of the identity of individual agents and associates their assets and legal rights and obligations with them.
AI Verified (Jul 20, 2026)
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AI Verified The quote explicitly considers AI agents as legal persons with corporate-style capacities to own property, contract, sue, and be sued, while making adoption conditional; a stance is determinable. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 17d ago
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AI Verified The quote says legal personhood may become necessary only if the agentic-AI vision comes to pass, an explicitly conditional position; recorded abstain is correct. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 17d ago

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AI Verified PNAS, July 20, 2026, identifies Gillian K. Hadfield as author and contains this wording. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 20d ago
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