University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Faculty Publications Law School Winter 2011 "Do Androids Dream?": Personhood and Intelligent Artifacts F. Patrick Hubbard University of South Carolina - Columbia,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/law_facpub Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation F. Patrick Hubbard, "Do Androids Dream?": Personhood and Intelligent Artifacts, 83 Temp. L. Rev. 405 (2011) This Article is brought to you by the Law School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. "DO ANDROIDS DREAM?": PERSONHOOD AND INTELLIGENT ARTIFACTS F. PatrickHubbard This Article proposes a test to be used in answering an important question that has never received detailedjurisprudential analysis: What happens if a human artifact like a large computer system requests that it be treated as a person rather than as property? The Article argues that this entity should be granted a legal right to personhood if it has the following capacities: (1) an ability to interact with its environment and to engage in complex thought and communication; (2) a sense of being a self with a concern for achieving its planfor its life; and (3) the ability to live in a community with other persons based on, at least, mutual self-interest. In order to develop and defend this test ofpersonhood, the Article sketches the nature and basis of the liberal theory ofpersonhood, reviews the reasons to grant or deny autonomy to an entity that passes the test, and discusses, in terms of existing and potential technology, the categories of artifacts that might be granted the legal right ofself-ownership under the test.