The Line

A “terrific” exploration of AI in our chatbot-obsessed era—and how it will challenge our ideas about personhood (New Yorker)

Chatbots like ChatGPT have challenged human exceptionalism: we are no longer the only beings capable of generating language and ideas fluently. But is ChatGPT conscious? Or is it merely engaging in sophisticated mimicry? And what happens in the future if the claims to consciousness are more credible? In The Line, James Boyle explores what these changes might do to our concept of personhood, to “the line” we believe separates our species from the rest of the world but that also separates “persons” with legal rights from objects.

The personhood wars—over the rights of corporations and animals, over the question of when life begins and ends—have always been contentious. We’ve even denied the personhood of members of our own species. How will those old fights affect the new ones, and vice versa? Boyle pursues these questions across a dizzying array of fields. He discusses moral philosophy and science fiction, transgenic species, nonhuman animals, the surprising history of corporate personality, and AI itself. Engaging with empathy and anthropomorphism, courtroom battles on behalf of chimps, and doom-laden projections about the threat of artificial intelligence, The Line offers fascinating and thoughtful answers to questions about our future that will arrive sooner than we think.