Artificial intelligence: asking about its ontological status
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15633/lie.30205Keywords:
artificial intelligence (AI), ontological status, person, borderline personAbstract
The article deals with the ontological status of AI. Is this a person or a thing or maybe an entity between the human and material worlds? The concept of borderline person is considered as to a possible conceptual place to adopt AI and its future realizations. The concept of the borderline person was originally coined in bioethical research with an application to higher animals. In the post-Lockean understanding of the person the borderline person is an inclusive term and it leads to treating AI as if it were a person. In the post-Boethian philosophy of the human person, the borderline person has a negative character and acts as an excluding term; it maintains AI and all its incarnations as a highly developed tool, which maybe reaches the borders of the human world but never enters it. Practical predictions about the applicability of AI suggest that the latter approach is more appropriate.
References
Baidoo-Anu D., Ansah L. O., Education in the era of generative artificial intelligence (AI): understanding the potential benefits of ChatGPT in promoting teaching and learning, “Journal of AI” 7 (2023) no. 1, p. 52–62, https://doi.org/10.61969/jai.1337500.
Bashash D., Faranoush M., Artificial intelligence (AI): the next stage of evolution?, “Iranian Journal of Blood & Cancer” 15 (2023) issue 3, p. 1–3, https://doi.org/10.61186/ijbc.15.3.1.
Bostrom N., Superintelligence. Paths, dangers, strategies, Oxford 2014.
Chen J., Burgess P., The boundaries of legal personhood: how spontaneous intelligence can problematise differences between humans, artificial intelligence, companies and animals, “Artificial Intelligence and Law” 27 (2019) issue 1, p. 73–92, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-018-9229-x.
Cheng‐Tek Tai M., The impact of artificial intelligence on human society and bioethics, “Tzu Chi Medical Journal” 32 (2020) issue 4, p. 339–343, https://doi.org/10.4103/tcmj.tcmj_71_20.
DeGrazia D., On the question of personhood beyond Homo sapiens, in: In defense of animals. The second wave, ed. P. Singer, Malden 2006, p. 40–53.
Elgammal A., Mazzone M., Artists, artificial intelligence and machine-based creativity in “Playform”, “Artnodes” (2020) no. 26, p. 1–8, https://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i26.3366.
Fletcher J., Humanhood: essays in biomedical ethics, New York 1979.
Jonas H., The imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age, transl. H. Jonas, Chicago 1984.
Kurzweil R., The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology, London 2005.
Locke J., Essay concerning human understanding, vol. 1, Oxford 1894, https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00018020.
Sandberg A., An overview of models of technological singularity, in: Transhumanist reader, eds. M. More, N. Vita-More, Malden 2013, p. 376–394, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118555927.ch36.
Spaemann R., Is every human being a person?, “The Thomist” 60 (1996) no. 3, p. 463–474, https://doi.org/10.1353/tho.1996.0013.
Spaemann R., Persons. The difference between “someone” and “something”, transl. O. O’Donovan, Oxford 2006.
Wojtyła K., Ethics primer. Elementarz etyczny, transl. H. McDonald, Lublin 2017.
Wojtyła K., Love and responsibility, transl. H. T. Willetts, San Francisco 1981.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The following rules apply to copyright:
1. The author declares that he or she has full copyright to the work, and such copyright it is not limited to the extent applicable to this declaration, that the article is an original work and that it does not infringe any third-party rights.
2. The author agrees to a free-of-charge, non-exclusive and non-restricted use of the work by Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow i.e.:
- to record and duplicate: make copies of the work by means of printing, reprography, magnetic or digital storage;
- to circulate the original or the copies of the work (disseminate, lend or lease the original or copies thereof, publicly display, screen or make the work publicly available so that everyone is able to access it at the time and in place they wish to do so);
- to include the work in a compilation;
- the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow may grant sublicenses Creative Commons Acknowledgement of authorship-Non-commercial use-Without derivative work 3.0 Poland
- the author and the title of the work will be listed,
- the place of publication (name of the periodical and an Internet link to the originally published work),
- the work will be distributed in a non-commercial way,
- no derivative works will be created.
The UPJPII Press does not waive any of its copyrights to any target group.
If you want to publish the text in Logos and Ethos, you must sign the license. However, the signing takes place at a later stage of publishing. Check the license: [license_en.pdf]