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Comment by Peter Underwood

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Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Auckland, specializing in corporate law and corporate governance.
When evaluating AI systems against the corporate form, only three of its five defining characteristics draw parallel. A corporation, as Lord Chancellor Thurlow is said to have remarked, has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked. We risk offering personhood to something with even less of either. Corporate law is a precedent to learn from, not a template to copy.
Unverified (Oct 12, 2026)
Source:
Dr Peter Underwood, “Personhood by Accident, Personhood by Design? Corporate Law’s Unintended Separation and the Future of AI,” Cambridge Research Group on Private Actor Responsibility discussion description, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, October 12, 2026.
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AI agents should be granted legal personhood as non-human corporations
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