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AI agents should be granted legal personhood as non-human corporations
Cast Your Vote:
Results (130 votes):
Total
(130 votes)
For 28 (22%)
Abstain 5 (4%)
Against 97 (75%)
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For (28)
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Peter N. SalibAssistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center researching constitutional law, economics, and artificial intelligence.votes For and says:
Some people worry that giving AIs separate legal personhood would let AI companies, or bad actors using AIs, shield themselves from responsibility. But it doesn’t have to work that way… when a Walmart delivery driver runs over a pedestrian, we want t...
more AI Verified source (Sep 30, 2026) 1 of 2 -
Matthew ParishEditor-in-chief of the Lviv Herald, an independent analytical journalism outlet.votes For and says:
Society may eventually find it useful to create a category of limited artificial legal personality without deciding that the entities enjoying it possess subjective experience. [...] Corporations already demonstrate that legal persons can enjoy only ...
more AI Verified source (Sep 11, 2026) -
Damien CharlotinFrench lawyer, data scientist, and HEC Paris senior research fellow focused on artificial intelligence and law.votes For and says:
And if we want these SSAs to obey law, we will have to grant them the benefits of the law as well as its burdens: property, standing, procedure. That would not make them human, but would help make them more governable.
AI Verified source (Sep 11, 2026) -
Julian BraithwaiteFormer UK ambassador to the WTO and the UN in Geneva; Chief Executive of the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking.votes For and says:
The law has been creating artificial persons for centuries. A corporation cannot feel pain or fall in love. Yet a company is a legal person. [...] The same logic may be useful for AI. An advanced autonomous AI could be required to become an artificia...
more AI Verified source (Sep 8, 2026) -
Imogen Lucy Grace RiversUniversity of Oxford philosophy researcher and author of a PhD thesis on legal personhood for autonomous AI.votes For and says:
I argue that the legal personification of LAWs would form part of an appropriate legal response to the risk of lethal accidents which the imminent proliferation of LAWs introduces.
AI Verified source (Aug 31, 2026)
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Abstain (5)
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Against (93)
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Pope Leo XIVHead of the Catholic Churchvotes Against and says:
Machines are tools, not persons. Today, some propose granting these systems rights, or even legal personhood. Such an approach risks obscuring human responsibility and leaving those who suffer harm to confront a faceless entity.
AI Verified source (Oct 31, 2026) -
Bank Policy InstituteNonpartisan U.S. public-policy, research, and advocacy group representing leading banks; publishes analysis on banking, technology, and regulatory policy.votes Against and says:
The "agent" is not a "legal person" – it is merely software provided by Meta.
AI Verified source (Oct 29, 2026) -
Brian JM QuinnProfessor of Law at Boston College Law School specializing in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, and venture capital.votes Against and says:
Proponents argue that by wrapping AI agents in a corporate shell with legal personality one can overcome this infirmity. [...] In truth, AI agents are already legible under current legal frameworks and it is not necessary to grant them personhood. [....
more AI Verified source (Oct 28, 2026) -
James ComerU.S. Representative from Kentucky and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountabilityvotes Against and says:
We are concerned that Delaware’s AIC proposal could be used to protect powerful AI companies and their investors from responsibility for reckless harmful actions, while also protecting non-transparent forces seeking anticompetitive regulatory capture...
more AI Verified source (Oct 26, 2026) -
Adam AuActing Co-CEO of Toys“R”Us Asia, data-privacy and technology-governance advocate, and adjunct associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.votes Against and says:
This presentation examines how agentic profiles strain the PDPO’s definitional gateways, rejects the fix of granting AI agents legal personhood, and proposes that protection should turn not only on who the data is about, but on what it can do.
AI Verified source (Oct 22, 2026) -
Bernie SandersU.S. Senator from Vermontvotes Against and says:
Thiel has decamped to Argentina, where President Javier Milei has called for the establishment of “non-human corporations” operated by AI agents, for which “human shareholders may participate, but are not required.” [...] This is absurd. This is irre...
more AI Verified source (Oct 16, 2026) -
Igho DaborSenior Lecturer in Law at the University of Huddersfield, writing on corporate accountability and AI governance.votes Against and says:
Supporters argue that incorporation itself addresses this concern—give an autonomous system a legal identity, and responsibility has a defined target, enforceable against the AIC and its assets. The point is credible; however, a legal target is not a...
more AI Verified source (Oct 14, 2026) -
Peter UnderwoodSenior Lecturer in Law at the University of Auckland, specializing in corporate law and corporate governance.votes Against and says:
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 offer...
more AI Verified source (Oct 12, 2026) -
Bernard MontelEMEA Field CTO at Tenable and cybersecurity strategist with over 20 years of industry experience.votes Against and says:
Either way, an AI agent is an automated tool, not a legal entity, so accountability always lands on the human administrators who configured its permissions.
AI Verified source (Oct 11, 2026) -
Oscar SoriaCo-founder of The Common Initiative, a think tank focused on governance, environment, and digital integrity.votes Against and says:
Dar personalidad jurídica a una entidad autónoma de inteligencia artificial es una idea irresponsable, peligrosa y tal vez la última que tengamos como humanidad
AI Verified source (Sep 28, 2026) -
Andrew N. FergusonChairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.votes Against and says:
I’m going to continue as long as I am chairman to resist this anthropomorphizing of these tools. If someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don’t think we would say, ‘Oh, what do we do about the tool?’
AI Verified source (Sep 25, 2026) -
Andrew CharltonAustralian Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economyvotes Against and says:
An AI agent is not a legal person, and in our law liability for this type of incident always sits with a person or a company. The liability has to be traced back to the intent of a person or a company that created or directed the agent.
AI Verified source (Sep 25, 2026) -
Jacob FoxHardware journalist and philosophy researcher writing for PC Gamer about technology and artificial intelligence.votes Against and says:
All of this seems great to me, and there are some things that I'm especially happy to see. Specifically, point number two: “The idea of model welfare is wrong. AIs should not have rights or legal personhood.”
AI Verified source (Sep 15, 2026) -
Bruno SteelPolicy researcher at the Centre for International Security & Economic Strategy, writing on agentic-AI accountability and liability.votes Against and says:
Make agentic ID issuance legally conditional on naming a responsible legal person or company. [...] Finally, agency law, vicarious liability and product liability already provide routes for allocating responsibility, though their application to agent...
more AI Verified source (Sep 14, 2026) -
Rebecca ParryProfessor at Nottingham Law School and co-director of its Centre for Law, Emerging Technologies and Business; teaches AI legal aspects and writes on law and technology.votes Against and says:
Agentic AI has no legal personality. As the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce's July 2026 Legal Statement on Liability for AI Harms confirms, an AI system cannot itself be liable; responsibility attaches to a legal person through ordinary principles, primari...
more AI Verified source (Sep 14, 2026) -
votes Against and says:
We reject the pursuit of legal personhood, or the idea that models might deserve welfare, or be entitled to rights.
AI Verified source (Sep 14, 2026) -
EONSRVietnamese AI-transformation company and official OpenAI partner publishing guidance on AI governance and agent liability.votes Against and says:
However, granting legal personhood to an autonomous sovereign AI agent creates a dangerous liability shield for operators, whereas expanding existing corporate vicarious liability offers a far more effective framework for accountability.
AI Verified source (Sep 12, 2026) -
G20 Interfaith ForumGlobal interfaith policy platform engaging governments and civil society on G20 policy priorities.votes Against and says:
Keep personhood human. AI systems should not be granted legal personhood or designed to mimic it in ways that shield companies from accountability. Legal responsibility must rest with the providers who build and deploy them.
AI Verified source (Sep 9, 2026) -
Synthocracy InstituteResearch institute publishing governance methods for accountable deployment of AI agents.votes Against and says:
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Liina VahtrasManaging Director at Estonia's e-Residency programme.votes Against and says:
AI agents cannot hold citizenship or legal personhood, but they can be linked to natural persons in legally sound ways.
AI Verified source (Sep 4, 2026) -
Anna CollardSVP Content Strategy and CISO Advisor at KnowBe4 Africa.votes Against and says:
Yet autonomy does not give an AI system legal personality. The law does not wait for an AI to ‘decide’ anything.
AI Verified source (Sep 2, 2026) -
Northon Salomão De OliveiraBrazilian attorney and legal researcher writing on AI agency, legal personality, and liability.votes Against and says:
This article examines a doctrinal confusion that has shaped a decade of legal scholarship on artificial intelligence: the conflation of the question “should an autonomous AI system hold legal personality” with the distinct question “to whom should an...
more AI Verified source (Aug 29, 2026) -
David B. HoppeAttorney at Gamma Law, writing on technology, contracts, and AI legal accountability.votes Against and says:
US law offers no legal personhood for AI systems. Every action an AI agent takes must be attributed to a human or corporate actor, even when the AI behaves unpredictably or beyond what the user or developer intended.
AI Verified source (Aug 14, 2026) -
Herbert Smith Freehills KramerGlobal law firm publishing legal analysis on technology, data protection, and artificial intelligence.votes Against and says:
An AI agent is not a legal person, so any civil liability would have to lie with the people or organisations around it.
AI Verified source (Jul 27, 2026) -
Deborah A. DeMottDuke Law professor and scholar of agency and fiduciary-duty law.votes Against and says:
Some people argue for personhood for agentic AI, and then people like me ask, ‘Well, how would an AI buy liability insurance?’
AI Verified source (Jul 27, 2026)
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