Mechanical agency, nature and artifact: The argument of consciousness within the legal and ethical reasoning concerning AI

Abstract

This paper analyses the present legal and ethical debate on the implementation of AI systems in the legal and institutional field. The focus is on the main type of argument employed to propose prohibition or limitations on the use of artificial intelligence – viz., the consciousness argument, that assumes the essential difference between human beings and artificial agents on the account of the former’s exclusive endowment with consciousness. This study delves into the theoretical premises of such arguments, showing how the modern construction of the subject in the ethical and juridical domain is there implicated. By referencing the metaphysical debates on the characteristics of humanness and mind, which took place through Bacon, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant, I will contend that the classical account of the subject as an autonomous and responsible individual has been far from unanimous in modern philosophy. Therefore, I will conclude by arguing that contemporary studies on AI tend to perform an ideological representation of the ontological distinction between human nature and artefact, indulging in the essentialisation of the liberal-capitalistic account of the individual mind.