With the increased prevalence of AI chatbots on dating apps, many users wonder if their date-to-be is really a person. The following clip depicts Will Smith on a date with Sophia the Robot, an AI human-like robot developed by Hanson Robotics. Despite Sophia demonstrating what seems to be a sense of humor, self-awareness, and an ability to act independently, the resulting date is awkward and clumsy. However, many first dates between persons are just as awkward, if not more!

I have utilized this clip in a moral psychology course, a theorizing race course, and a course on the ethical implications of genetic research, as the discussion of who—or what—ought to be considered a person is found in many facets of philosophical thought.

Most recently, I have used this clip to allow students to humorously engage with a Kantian notion of persons. According to Kant, reason gives humans the ability to self-govern, which is required for both full personhood and active citizenship (i.e., voting). It is also in virtue of this self-governance that every person has a (human) dignity that entitles them to equal rights, freedoms, and protections. However, Kant’s racist and sexist views suggest that being human is not sufficient for his notion of a person. For example, in Kant’s earlier writings, he has claimed that women, negroes, and Native Americans are incapable of the level of rationality and self-governance required for full personhood. Setting aside worries that Kant’s notion of personhood justifies and perpetuates racial and gendered oppression, Kant’s overemphasis on reason and self-governance raises an interesting, tangential question: is being biologically human necessary to ‘count’ as a person?¹ Enter Sophia the Robot.

Sophia can engage in conversation and generate movements that simulate human-like behaviors via the use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition. She is designed with anthropomorphic traits, including artificial skin, the ability to modulate her tone of voice, and the ability to simulate sixty-two human-like facial expressions. In fact, her lifelike nature is allegedly one of the reasons Saudi Arabia granted Sophia citizenship, making her the first robot to be given full legal personhood. On the one hand, Sophia’s behavior requires a level of human input, raising the question as to whether Sophia is truly autonomous. On the other hand, Sophia’s facial movements utilize a deep neural network that is modeled after the interconnected neural network that orchestrates human emotions. As expected of a person on a date, Sophia makes eye contact with Will Smith, smiles, and appropriately responds to his questions. However, in one cringeworthy moment, Will Smith leans in to kiss Sophia, and she responds by letting Will know that they should just be friends and that he is on her “friends list” now—a reasonable response to the floundering date and a conclusion she seems to have made on her own.

The clip is a helpful tool to jump-start a class discussion on the necessary and sufficient properties needed for personhood. Before showing the clip, I ask students to brainstorm a list of characteristics that they think are required to be a person. Often, the most popular requirement is a certain level of cognitive ability or problem-solving, followed by an ability to feel pain and an ability to interact with their environment. I then show the clip and ask students to vote on whether they think social robots like Sophia should be considered a person. A majority of students vote no, citing the fact that Sophia cannot feel pain and that her behaviors are authored by algorithmic processes rather than an authentic sense of self. This invites questions about whether machine learning differs from human learning in a way that is morally meaningful.

Another available conclusion is that Sophia should be considered a subperson, a being that it is morally permissible to use as a means to an end and that, at best, can achieve passive citizenship (i.e., be protected by the law but excluded from voting). To reckon with the inconsistencies between Kant’s ethics and his racist and sexist views, Charles Mills proposes a distinction between persons, subpersons, humans, and subhumans. For Mills, person refers to those entitled to equal normative treatment, and subperson refers to racially inferior humans or humanoids that are deemed inferior because of some perceived racially based deficits in cognition or character that justify their marginalization and dependency on others. The person-subperson distinction is not contiguous with the human-subhuman distinction, reiterating the claim that being biologically human is not sufficient for personhood, though it may be necessary. While a certain cognitive capacity may not be an appropriate exclusion criterion for personhood, being human may still be a worthy contender.

Lastly, the humorous nature of this clip provides a helpful entry point for discussions of more contentious debates regarding legal and moral personhood. Other cases I have considered in conjunction with Sophia the Robot include: individuals in a persistent vegetative state who are biologically human but do not recover advanced cognitive function or an ability to interact with the environment in a meaningful way, Pablo Escobar’s ‘Cocaine Hippos’ and how they were recognized as legal persons in a Colombian court case, and the notion of corporate personhood, including corporate protections under the First Amendment and the ability for corporations to engage in political campaigns. The last two are additional examples in which personhood—whether it be full person or subperson status—has been given to non-humans.

Sources

Blair, Margaret M. 2015. “Of Corporations, Courts, Personhood, and Morality.” Business Ethics Quarterly 24(4): 415–431.

Kant, Immanuel. 1964. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H. J. Paton. 3rd ed. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Kleingeld, Pauline. 2007. “Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race.” Philosophical Quarterly 57: 573–592.

Mills, Charles W. 2014. “Kant and Race, Redux.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 35 (1–2): 1–33.

Mills, Charles W. 2018. “Black Radical Kantianism.” Res Philosophica 95 (1): 1–33.

Seewer, John. 2021. “US Judge: Pablo Escobar’s Cocaine Hippos Legally ‘People.'” AP News, 25 Oct 2021.

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