Taking AI Personally: The Moral Implications of Artificial Personhood in Midcentury Science Fiction

Author: Matthew Cusumano

Field of Study: Undeclared

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 49

Timeslot: Midday

Abstract: What makes a person? Philosophers and legal theorists cite rationality, consciousness, agency, and moral interests as possible criteria for personhood, but the concept is notoriously fuzzy. Still, personhood has taken on new urgency in the age of advancing artificial intelligence models, as scholars and futurists raise the possibility that AI models may soon meet some or all of the traditional criteria. Focusing on the question of moral personhood, this paper turns to science fiction works including “EPICAC” by Kurt Vonnegut and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick to examine how past artists and thinkers scrutinized the moral implications of AI personhood. Strikingly, these mid-20th-century thinkers settled on three key criteria for personhood: the capacity for self-expression, an emotional inner life, and concern about its own fate. These works suggest that if intelligent machines attain these traits, they deserve rights and ethical treatment––a daunting political and ethical challenge for the 21st century.