PERSONIFYING CORPORATIONS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND OTHER ENTITIES AND COMMUNICATING WITH THEM
Keywords:
Bruno Latour, Actor-Network Theory, personification, artificial intelligence, legal person, legal personhood, electronic person, non-human actants, information and communication technologiesAbstract
In contemporary technological society, non-human entities are increasingly becoming full participants in social and legal relations. Expressions such as “makes decisions,” “responds,” and even “bears responsibility” are routinely applied to corporations, artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and information and communication technologies (ICT). This phenomenon—the personification of non-human things and communication with them—stands in tension with the subject/object (human/thing) dualism of traditional social theory. Through concepts from Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT)—actant, the principle of symmetry, delegation, and hybrid—this article analyzes the conceptual foundations of personification and of communication with non-human subjects.Downloads
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