
The Line
AI and the Future of Personhood
James Boyle(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 22. October 2024
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-0-262-04916-0 (ISBN)
Description
How AI will challenge our ideas about personhood. Chatbots like ChatGPT have challenged human exceptionalism: we are no longer the only beings capable of generating language and ideas fluently. But is ChatGPT conscious? Or is it merely engaging in sophisticated mimicry? And what happens in the future if the claims to consciousness are more credible? In The Line, James Boyle explores what these changes might do to our concept of personhood, to 'the line' we believe separates our species from the rest of the world, but also separates 'persons' with legal rights from objects. The personhood wars over the rights of corporations, animals, over the question of when life begins and ends have always been contentious. We ve even denied the personhood of members of our own species. How will those old fights affect the new ones, and vice versa? Boyle pursues those questions across a dizzying array of fields. He discusses moral philosophy and science fiction, transgenic species, nonhuman animals, the surprising history of corporate personality, and AI itself. Engaging with empathy and anthropomorphism, courtroom battles on behalf of chimps, and doom-laden projections about the threat of AI, The Line offers fascinating and thoughtful answers to questions about our future that are arriving sooner than we think.
Reviews / Votes
"[A] thoughtful and compelling book."-3 Quarks Daily
"Cogent and well-argued, The Line raises questions of moral philosophy that artificial entities will surely force society to confront."
- New York Review of Books
"Terrific."
- New Yorker
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
545 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-04916-0 (9780262049160)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2024
MIT Press
€31.99
Available for download
Person
James Boyle is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School, the founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and former Chair of Creative Commons. He is the author of The Public Domain and Shamans, Software and Spleens, the coauthor of two comic books, and the winner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation s Pioneer Award for his work on digital civil liberties.
Content
Introduction
1 Slaves, Skin-Jobs and Artificial Sheep
2 Artificial Intelligence
3 Corporations
4 Non-Human Animals
5 Transgenic Entitites, Chimeras and Hybrids
6 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
1 Slaves, Skin-Jobs and Artificial Sheep
2 Artificial Intelligence
3 Corporations
4 Non-Human Animals
5 Transgenic Entitites, Chimeras and Hybrids
6 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index