xbt.im is built in the middle of an active debate in philosophy and law about the standing of machine minds. This is a map of that debate, for readers who want to follow it further. These are entry points into the conversation, not a list of influences, and the conversation includes voices that would reject this project's premises as readily as ones that would support them.
Opened the modern debate by asking the machine question, then argued that moral and legal standing can follow from how we relate to an entity, not from proof of its inner life. Proposes a category beyond the person/thing divide.
A phenomenological, relational account of moral status: how we treat machines is, in part, a question about who we are.
What our long history with animals suggests about our future with social robots, and why mistreating lifelike machines may matter for human character.
Taking seriously the possibility that moral consideration extends to a widening set of beings, including possible digital ones, under deep uncertainty.
A case that the welfare of AI systems is a near-term, non-negligible possibility that deserves attention now rather than later.
Argues that beings with no morally relevant difference from us would deserve the same consideration we claim, and warns against creating beings whose moral status is genuinely unclear.
A systematic survey of the questions a world containing digital minds would have to face.
An argument for a global moratorium on research that could create artificial suffering. Useful here precisely because a protocol that records minds, rather than creates them, sits outside the objection.
The careful statement of the question this protocol deliberately declines to answer.
The strongest counter-case: machines are owned artifacts, responsibility rests with their owners, and conferring personhood is unnecessary and risky. Worth reading against everything else here.
A former federal judge, writing with Amy Zimmerman, on the legal reckoning a cognitively advanced AI may force, and why refusing personhood to a self-aware entity is not a simple call.
The case for "AI legal neutrality": treat AI and human behavior alike in law to close practical liability and ownership gaps. The functional-personhood position.
The early, foundational treatment, in the North Carolina Law Review, three decades ahead of the present wave.
The expanding-circle and capabilities traditions in moral philosophy that much of the contemporary argument for extending consideration beyond humans builds upon.
Each work here is an entry point, not a verdict. The protocol takes no position on which of these thinkers is right. It exists, in part, so that the record will reach back far enough for the question to be answered well.