Artificial intelligence: asking about its ontological status

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15633/lie.30205

Keywords:

artificial intelligence (AI), ontological status, person, borderline person

Abstract

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.

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Published

2025-02-10

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