James Boyle: The Line—AI And the Future of Personhood

James Boyle: The Line—AI And the Future of Personhood

Author: Helen and Dave Edwards September 28, 2024 Duration: 58:04

We're excited to welcome Jamie Boyle to the podcast. Jamie is a law professor and author of the thought-provoking book The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood.

In The Line, Jamie challenges our assumptions about personhood and humanity, arguing that these boundaries are more fluid than traditionally believed. He explores diverse contexts like animal rights, corporate personhood, and AI development to illustrate how debates around personhood permeate philosophy, law, art, and morality.

Jamie uses fascinating examples from science fiction, legal history, and philosophy to illustrate the challenges we face in defining the rights and moral status of artificial entities. He argues that grappling with these questions may lead to a profound re-examination of human identity and consciousness.

What's particularly compelling about Jamie’s approach is how he frames this as a journey of moral expansion, drawing parallels to how we've expanded our circle of empathy in the past. He also offers surprising insights into legal history, revealing how corporate personhood emerged more by accident than design—a cautionary tale as we consider AI rights.

We believe this book is both ahead of its time and right on time. It sharpens our understanding of difficult concepts—namely, that the boundaries between organic and synthetic are blurring, creating profound existential challenges we need to prepare for now.

To quote Jamie from The Line: "Grappling with the question of synthetic others may bring about a reexamination of the nature of human identity and consciousness. I want to stress the potential magnitude of that reexamination. This process may offer challenges to our self conception unparalleled since secular philosophers declared that we would have to learn to live with a god shaped hole at the center of the universe."

Let's dive into our conversation with Jamie Boyle.


If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Subscribe to get Artificiality delivered to your email

Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon

Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music


#artificiality #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #intimacyeconomy #spaciality #consciousness #knowledge #mindforourminds


Hosted by Helen and Dave Edwards, Stay Human, from the Artificiality Institute is a conversation that lives in the messy, human space between our tools and our selves. Each episode digs into the subtle ways artificial intelligence is reshaping our daily decisions, our creative impulses, and even our sense of identity. This isn't a technical manual or a series of futuristic predictions; it's a grounded exploration of how we maintain our agency in a world increasingly mediated by algorithms. The podcast operates from a core belief: that our engagement with AI should be about more than just safety or efficiency-it needs to be meaningful and worthwhile. You'll hear discussions rooted in story-based research, where complex ideas about cognition and ethics are unpacked through relatable narratives and real-world examples. The goal is to provide a framework for thoughtful choice, helping each of us consciously design the relationship we want with the machines in our lives. Tuning in offers a chance to step back from the hype and consider how we can actively remain the authors of our own minds, preserving what makes us uniquely human even as the technology evolves. It's an essential listen for anyone curious about the personal and philosophical dimensions of our digital age.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Stay Human, from the Artificiality Institute
Podcast Episodes
Julia Rhodes Davis: Advancing Racial Equity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:39
In this episode, we speak with Julia Rhodes Davis, a Senior Advisor at Data & Society, about her recent report "Advancing Racial Equity Through Technology Policy" published by the AI Now Institute. This comprehensive rep…
Alicia Juarrero: Context Changes Everything [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:50
Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrero challenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects as well, and they enable the emergenc…
Jai Vipra: Computational Power and AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:17
Jai Vipra is a research fellow at the AI Now Institute where she focuses on competition issues in frontier AI models. She recently published the report Computational Power and AI which focuses on compute as a core depend…
Wendy Wong: We, the Data, and Human Rights [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:40
Wendy Wong is a professor of political science and principal’s research chair at the University of British Columbia where she researches and teaches about the governance of emerging technologies, human rights, and civil…
Chris Summerfield: Natural General Intelligence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:53
Chris Summerfield is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Oxford. His work is concerned with understanding how humans learn and make decisions. He is interested in how humans acquire new concepts or patt…
Michael Bungay Stanier: How to Work with (Almost) Anyone [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:02
Michael Bungay Stanier has an extraordinary talent for distilling the complexity of human relationships into easy to remember and follow frameworks—doing so with just the right amount of Australian humor and plenty of vu…
Synthesis & Generative AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:21
An exploration of how we might conceptualize the design of AGI within the context of human left and right brains. The tension between AI and human functioning highlights unique cooperation. AI uses language, abstraction,…
Jonathan Coulton: Generative AI, songwriting, and creativity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:37
If you’ve read our show notes, you’ll know that our music was written and performed by Jonathan Coulton. I’ve known Jonathan for more than 30 years, dating back to when we sang together in college. But that’s a story for…
Is it possible for AI to be meaningful? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:30
An exploration of the intersection of AI, meaning, and human relationships. In this episode, we dive deep into the role of AI in our lives and how it can influence our perception of meaning. We explore how AI, and specif…
Existential risk of AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:37
ChatGPT, Dall-e, Midjourney, Bard, and Bing are here. Many others are coming. At every dinner conversation, classroom lesson, and business meeting people are talking about AI. There are some big questions that now everyo…