Join us for a book talk with legal scholar JAMES BOYLE, discussing his book THE LINE: AI and the Future of Personhood, in conversation with KATE DARLING of the MIT Media Lab.
November 19th at 10am PT / 1pm ET
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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.
You can find a free, open access copy of The Line here, and you can purchase a copy directly from MIT Press here.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
JAMES BOYLE is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School, 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.
DR. KATE DARLING is a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab and leads the Robotics Ethics & Society research team at the Boston Dynamics AI Institute. She is the author of The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots. Kate’s work explores the intersections of robotic technology and society, with a particular interest in legal, economic, social, and ethical issues.
Join Us! November 19th, 10am PT / 1pm ET