Return to search

Legal personality of artificial intelligence under international law

To be able to offer a deeper understanding of the topic this work will first examine the concept of legal personality, its meaning and application in the legal framework of international law over the years. Without claiming advanced technological knowledge in scientific areas like robotics and engineering the paper will then try to present some basic overview over the latest developments concerning Artificial Intelligence, such as quantum computing and emotional intelligence. Consequently some suggestions about possibilities of connecting these two topics will be made. The questions introduced will engage with the nature and different forms of legal personhood, its connection to intelligence, autonomy and/or consciousness. This paper aims to create a more practical and not a general, hypothetical idea of how an AI agent could be granted international legal personality and what could be the possible effects of that (for example rights and obligations). For this purpose it will focus on the recognised subjects of international law and examine on their example an AI agent as a possible future actor in international legal relationships. Subject of reference will be international law and recent developments in EU law, such as the European Parliament initiative to regulate Artificial Intelligence as well as some regulations and “visions” of national legislation, for example Estonia and China. Consequently the dangers of granting legal personhood to AI agents will be presented and discussed. The arguments against the creation of a “technical veil” will be examined closely. The work will then refer to possible advantages and positive aspects of an AI’s legal personhood under international law. In the final chapter a conclusion and some recommendation will be made.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/31586
Date13 March 2020
CreatorsIvanova, Anna Todorova
ContributorsPowell, Cathleen
PublisherFaculty of Law, Department of Commercial Law
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeMaster Thesis, Masters, LLM
Formatapplication/pdf

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds