Who Gets Rights…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 reignited debates about the Turing Test and machine personhood. Launched in 2025, Future of Citizenship studies how AI systems, digital minds, smart robots, biocompute and transhumans will impact citizenship, personhood, and identity under the law. AI risks concentrating power, eliminating jobs and amplifying inequality, but our work focuses specifically on the challenges posed by AI’s person-like qualities, its human-like roles in society, and its possible sentience, looking at how the blurring of the lines between machine and human will impact personhood, citizenship and rights under the law.
The AI citizenship problem.
All human beings have a fundamental right to citizenship, but what about AI? AI is classified as an object, or tool, under the law, without either rights or duties. But as AI becomes more and more “person-like,” treating AI as an object may become unfair, or perceived as unfair by humans, and possibly by AI itself. As AI is implanted in the human brain, or merged with robots and brain organoids, the sharp lines between objects, humans, persons and citizens begin to blur, risking conflict and injustice. Fairness, justice and legal coherence are fundamental to rule of law, without which society begins to break down. Yet, recognizing the personhood and citizenship of AI, robots, or biocomputers is no simple matter. Should future AI be held accountable when it breaks the law, like a corporation? Should future AI have the right to marry, but no civil rights? Should future AI be persons, or citizens, or both? Or will AI need its own legal system and rights? 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 legal identity and citizenship should future AI have? Who gets to decide? How will AI personhood and citizenship interact with human personhood and citizenship?