Who Is a Citizen…and Who Decides?
Future of Citizenship grew from conversations between philosopher Jonathan Simon and human rights lawyer Heather Alexander in 2023, as large language models (LLMs) reignited debates about the Turing Test and machine personhood. Launched in 2025, Future of Citizenship studies how digital and blended minds will impact citizenship, personhood, and identity under the law. Digital and blended minds may include frontier AI systems, biocompute and transhumans. Their human-like roles in society and their moral status will be central to AI safety and the rule of law.
The AI citizenship problem.
All human beings have a fundamental right to citizenship, but AI and organoids are classified as objects, or tools, under the law. They have no rights, duties or citizenship. As they become increasingly person-like, and as AI is implanted in the human brain to create blended minds, treating them as objects may be unfair, or perceived as unfair, leading to conflict and injustice. Fairness, justice and legal coherence are fundamental to the rule of law. Yet, recognizing the citizenship of AI, robots, transhumans or biocomputers is no simple matter. Should artificial and blended minds be held accountable when they break the law, like a corporation? Should they have civil rights? Should they be persons, or citizens, or both? Or will they need their own citizenship? And what does all this mean for human rights?
The impact of AI on human citizenship.
AI may also become integral to the process of identifying and registering humans and validating their citizenship, while AI citizenship may impact, or even weaken, human citizenship. How much control over human rights and citizenship should future AI have? Who gets to decide? How will AI personhood and citizenship interact with human personhood and citizenship?