Comment by Jeremy Hogan

Corporate personhood is one of the clearest examples. Corporations can sue, be sued, own property, enter contracts, and invoke important legal protections despite having no consciousness, sentience, or biological life. The point is not that corporations suffer, but that the law has already shown it can treat an artificial entity as a legal person when policy reasons justify doing so. [...] If a river can be treated as a legal person for protection purposes, then the claim that AI must be excluded solely because it lacks biology becomes much harder to defend as a matter of legal principle. At that point, the debate becomes a policy question: when, if ever, should AI protection begin?