Defining 'Personhood': AI, Citizenship, and Our Future

This might sound crazy.

But we should consider an amendment to the US Constitution that clarifies the definition of a “person”, ensuring that citizenship and the right to vote is specific to humans.

At the surface, this sounds absurd. I know.

But that’s exactly the reason why now is the right time to introduce such a change.

The entire idea is so outlandish that the only reason people would be against such a clarification is because of its absurdity. I don’t see any major, fundamental beliefs that would encourage someone to actively advocate against something like this.

Advances in artificial intelligence will continue to rapidly progress without us understanding how these systems actually work. And I believe we will see a future where machines are capable of developing strong “relationships” with humans and can influence us extremely well. (This is where the alignment problem becomes even more important).

We already see this today.

AI hallucinations can be so convincing that people just take the output as truth without validating its correctness.

And these systems will just get better, enabling future generations to grow up interacting with machines in a way that’s increasingly human-like.

What’s stopping the next generation from being convinced that these systems can actually think for themselves and deserve rights?

The public opinion of what intelligent life is may change.

Just like how great organizations like PETA protect animal rights (I think this would be a crazy concept to most people 100 years ago), there’s a possibility that a similar movement emerges advocating for machine and AI rights. And it’s already happening.

When we look at our country’s past, there was a time when only white men could vote. It’s crazy to recognize that this was the accepted way the world worked. But as we progressed, the expansion of rights and suffrage movements completely changed society and have become a fundamental, integral part of our country.

Advocating for the explicit prevention of machine citizenship and/or suffrage seems like something from a sci-fi movie. But if you’ve ever used ChatGPT (or any other AI system), you’ve probably been just as blown away as I have. Our world becomes increasingly more like science fiction every day.

One fundamental truth we see over and over again is that humans cannot predict the future well. The way we live today is so drastically different from the way our ancestors lived that it’s safe to say we can’t even begin to imagine what life will be like for our great-grandchildren. But all we know is that these systems will continue to advance exponentially.

So what’s there to lose?

What risk do we take by adding such a clarification? In the worst case, it becomes a historical artifact of a time where we believed there was a chance of machines becoming equal to people in intelligence and their rights.

And in the best case, we protect humanity’s ability to govern ourselves.