This report will map the theoretical terrain for AI legal personhood, identifying key pathways to legal personhood and their implications for current and near-future AI systems. It will then assess which pathways are most likely to spark social, legal, and political debates, providing decisionmakers with concrete strategies for shaping early discussion around AI duties and rights.
About the project
This project will develop a clear, interdisciplinary framework for understanding how societies can prepare for emerging debates about AI welfare, rights, and legal personhood. Drawing on moral theory, legal theory, and current social and political debates, the report will explain how the structure of legal personhood applies to current and near-future AI systems, and it will provide practical guidance for researchers, companies, and governments.
At the theoretical level, the report will examine the “incidents” of legal personhood in the Honoré sense, that is, the core elements that make up the legal idea of a person. Building on bundle theories and recent work such as Novelli’s radial conception of legal personhood, we will explain how these incidents relate to each other, and how they relate to the duties and rights typically attributed to legal persons. We will consider intrinsic versus instrumental incidents, active versus passive incidents, and how different types of AI systems might warrant different sets of incidents rather than a single, fixed set. To illustrate these relationships, the report may use visual tools such as radial charts or maps that show how specific agency or patiency-related features of AI systems might correlate with different legal incidents.
At the practical level, the report will explore how stakeholders can navigate emerging debates about AI personhood. Surveying case studies involving creative authorship, economic agency, legal liability, and more, we will discuss which issues are likely to trigger legal and political debates, and how researchers, companies, and governments can navigate such debates thoughtfully. We will also examine existing scholarship regarding corporate personhood, animal rights, rights of nature, and other edge cases for lessons about the efficacy of (a) focusing on specific incidents versus the general concept of personhood, and (b) extending existing concepts and frameworks (such as personhood) to AI systems versus developing new concepts and frameworks for this new class of entities.
References:
Kurki, Visa. (2019) A Theory of Legal Personhood, Oxford University Press
Kurki, Visa. (2023) Legal Personhood, Cambridge University Press
Mocanu, Diana. (2025, forthcoming) with Walckiers, Pierre. Des objets aux sujets de droit et au-delà. Querelles méthodologiques autour des approches graduelles et relationnelles du statut juridique de l’intelligence artificielle. In Revue Droit & Philosophie, numéro spécial sur les « Métamorphoses du (sujet de) droit ».
Mocanu, Diana. (2025) Degrees of AI personhood. In P. Hacker (ed.) Oxford Intersections: AI in Society. Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945215.003.0002.
Mocanu, Diana. (2022) Gradient legal personhood for AI systems - Painting continental legal shapes made to fit analytical moulds. Frontiers in Robotics and A I, 8, 1-11. doi:10.3389/frobt.2021.788179 http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/256388
Mocanu, Diana. (2021) Negotiating the Legal Status of Artificial Intelligence Systems in Future Societies in Hervé Jacquemin (coordinator), Time to reshape the digital society, 2021, p. 509-522. Bruxelles: Larcier. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/258151
Sebo, Jeff. (2023) Insects, AI Systems, and the Future of Legal Personhood. Animal Law Review. https://jeffsebo.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/insects-ai-systems-and-the-future-of-legal-personhood-nov-22-2024.pdf
Theory of change
This project advances AI safety by clarifying how legal frameworks can help manage risks from increasingly capable and autonomous AI systems. By analyzing which legal incidents should apply to different kinds of AI, the report will identify tools that can promote responsible behavior by developers and users. Clear legal structures can reduce ambiguity, improve accountability, and create incentives for safer system deployment. In this way, the project supports a more reliable governance environment for advanced AI.
The project also advances AI welfare by examining how legal concepts such as legal rights and standing might apply to AI systems that could one day have morally significant experiences or preferences. By distinguishing between different incidents of legal personhood, the report will identify which kinds of protections could be appropriate for different kinds of AI. This supports more thoughtful engagement with the moral status of AI, striking a balance between over-attribution and under-attribution of moral and legal status.
Your role
We would be excited for mentees to contribute to this project in a variety of ways depending on their backgrounds and interests. For example, they can research specific issues and produce background memos; they can contribute to outline and draft material; they can comment on outline and draft material; they can help with formatting, references, copyediting, or graphic design; and more. We can then credit them as authors or research assistants depending on what kind of role they end up playing.
Prerequisites
Required
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A clear, reference-dense writing style: This report is meant to be accessible and engaging for researchers, policymakers, and the general public. Mentees must demonstrate ability to write accessibly while maintaining rigor and proper attribution.
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Comfort with interdisciplinary work: This report will integrate work in a variety of fields in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Mentees must demonstrate an ability to engage with literatures beyond their home discipline.
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Strong research skills: Researchers must be able to find, evaluate, and synthesize sources from diverse fields, including whitepapers, policy documents, and regulatory filings. We may need to speak with practitioners, policymakers, and the like as well.
Preferred
This is a multidisciplinary project, so we welcome expressions of interest from people with a variety of backgrounds. With that said, we would be most excited to work with:
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A researcher with a background in AI, both to help with material about the nature of AI and to help with material about connections with AI safety and alignment.
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A researcher with a background in the social sciences (e.g., sociology or political science), to help us predict how societal debates about AI personhood might develop.
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A generalist team member who can help with basic research, writing, formatting, references, copyediting, graphic design, or other such tasks.
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Familiarity with the concept of legal personhood, and debates about nonhuman personhood
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Familiarity with AI safety and welfare concepts (alignment, x-risk, disempowerment)
Nice to Have
- A sense of humor and comfort with online discourse (this topic generates strong reactions, and AI welfare and rights discourse can get heavy if you are not already acclimated)
Time commitment
We are very open to different levels of involvement. By default we expect contributions in the 5-15 hour per week range, though we would be happy to discuss other possibilities as well.
Relationship with mentees
My role will be between "limited involvement" and "guidance"; I plan to attend occasional team meetings and otherwise provide high level guidance.
Location preference
The project leads are in Eastern European Standard Time (GMT+2) and The Eastern Time Zone (GMT-5), and we would be happy to welcome mentees in other time zones as well.
Application question(s)
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In your view, what is the strongest argument for giving AI systems some form of legal personhood, and the strongest argument against? Which do you find more compelling, and why? (~300 words)
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Describe a time you had to synthesize research from multiple disciplines or write about a topic outside your primary expertise. What was challenging, and how did you approach it? (~200 words)
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What specific aspect of this project most interests you, what skills or perspective would you bring to it, and which skills or perspective would you most like to get out of it? (~200 words)
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Provide a link to one or more relevant writing samples and briefly note your role in the project (optional, ~50 words per project)
About the mentors
Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His research focuses on animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; and global health and climate ethics and policy. He is the author of The Moral Circle and Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. He is also an advisory board member at the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, an advisor at Eleos AI, and a senior affiliate at the Institute for Law & AI.
Diana Mocanu is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, in the framework of the ERC Project LEGACY on Agency in Law. There, she researches artificial and group agency as challenges to the Liberal notion of agency that legal systems have been relying on from the nineteenth century onwards. Previously she got her PhD in law from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium with a thesis on the Legal status of AI systems in the European Union. She has published extensively on legal personhood and AI. Her research interests more generally lie at the intersections between law, philosophy, and emerging technologies.
Visa Kurki is Professor of Jurisprudence (Legal Theory) at the University of Helsinki. He is internationally known for his work on legal personhood, including A Theory of Legal Personhood (Oxford University Press 2019).
Toni is a researcher at the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy and the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. Previously, she worked as an editor at the Center for AI Safety, a research fellow at Longview Philanthropy, and the managing editor of Social Theory and Practice. She also worked as the director of research for Animal Charity Evaluators, where she led charity evaluations and managed two grant programs.