
Contents
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Introduction Introduction
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Personhood for Social Robots Personhood for Social Robots
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Process Versus Substance Philosophy Process Versus Substance Philosophy
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African Personhood African Personhood
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Social Robots for Older Adults Social Robots for Older Adults
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Philosophical and Practical Objections Philosophical and Practical Objections
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Philosophical Objections Philosophical Objections
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Practical Objections Practical Objections
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Conclusion Conclusion
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References References
Person, Not Thing: A Relational Path to Personhood for Social Robots
Get accessSchool of Medicine, Department of Bioethics and Humanities
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Published:20 March 2025
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Abstract
This article is a philosophical exploration of personhood for prosocial artificial intelligence (AI). Section 2 motivates philosophical thinking about AI by highlighting how technological advances like generative AI are deeply disruptive to core philosophical concepts like personhood, using social robots to illustrate. It proposes conceptually engineering personhood to better capture the ways we interact with prosocial AI, and draws on the African philosophy of ubuntu to develop a relational view of personhood. The African relational view holds that social robots count as persons if they engage with humans in prosocial ways, such as acting kindly, helpfully, generously, and reliably. Section 3 considers and replies to philosophical and practical objections to assigning ‘personhood’ to social robots. The philosophical objection stresses that social robots (currently) lack consciousness, which is necessary for being a person. The practical objections hold that even if prosocial AI could qualify as a person, it does not currently qualify because it has many antisocial effects, such as addicting people, reproducing implicit biases, violating privacy, deceiving users, and reducing human connection. Section 4 concludes that drawing insights from African philosophy enabled us to engineer the concept of personhood in ways that better characterize how we interact with prosocial AI. However, AI could fail at personhood unless humans design and deploy it in ways that safeguard valued features of human social life.
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