Professor Simmons Reviews New Title: A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents

Professor Tom Simmons is contributing to the collection development effort of the USD Law Library. Under this program, professors make recommendations for titles to be added to the Law Library's collection. Consistent with the Collection Development Policy of the Law Library, titles recommended for acquisition by the faculty are given priority consideration. Below Professor Simmons provides a review of a title acquired under the program. Thank you Professor Simmons!

Review of: Samir Chopra & Laurence F. White, A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011)



Philosophy Professor Chopra and attorney White’s work synthesizes both the philosophical and legal dilemmas of emerging autonomous entities with some measure of artificial intelligence. They consider thinking robots in the context of contracts, agency, and tort. Their concluding chapter on the possibility of legal personhood contains their most stirring and creative propositions.

Noting that legal personhood does not necessarily signify moral personhood, the authors emphasize that when the law endows personhood on a non-human, it does so largely for functional and practical reasons: “The law might or might not require this change in status given the functionality and social role of artificial agents. But pragmatism can be wedded to normativity: the case for artificial agents’ legal personality can come to acquire the aura of an imperative depending on the nature of our relationships with them, and the roles they are asked to fulfill in our future social orderings.” (p. 154)

Legal personhood does not necessarily imply full personhood. Corporations are persons insofar as they can own property, contract, hire agents, sue and be used, and suffer prosecution for misdeeds. Yet corporations cannot adopt children. Nor may corporations be considered victims of assault and battery. The contours of personhood for non-humans are drawn according to social norms and functionality.

Chopra and White’s book explains how the capacity of autonomous entities for consciousness, awareness, or at least the ability to execute discretionary decisions will drive the recognition of personhood. The technological future of thinking robots will meet the law in recognizable and perhaps even predictable encounters.