Professor Lisa Siraganian, J.D., Ph.D.
J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities
Department of Comparative Thought and Literature
Johns Hopkins University

What is “ePersonhood”—electronic legal personhood—and why has the hope for an autonomous artificial intelligence become so seductive? What work does this belief do, and how does it do it? This talk will explore these questions, examining how the language used to discuss current AI and ePersonhood misleads through deceptive analogies, like the notions of AI “bullshitting,” “hallucinating.” The problem is not only that AI lacks something (such as an intention to mean and to communicate) that we, human beings, have. The problem is that AI has not yet exhibited even the capacity to exhibit that fundamental lack—or, for that matter, to understand what it would mean to communicate the truth or to bullshit. By examining the language that the law and AI theorists use to think about LLMs like ChatGPT, we will see more clearly what follows from our widely held self-deception about the capacity and status of AI legal persons—ePersons.

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The Grafstein Annual Lecture in Communications was established by Senator Jerry S. Grafstein, Q.C., Class of 1958, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his graduation from the Faculty of Law and the 10th anniversary of the graduation of his son, Laurence Grafstein and daughter-in-law, Rebecca Grafstein (nee Weatherhead), both from the Class of 1988.

The inaugural lecture was delivered in the fall of 1999 by Charles Dalfen of Torys, a former professor at U of T’s Faculty of Law.