# The Full Rights Dilemma for A.I. Systems of Debatable Personhood

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.17509 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17509/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Feb 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Artificial Intelligence is stupid and causal reasoning won't fix it](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07371/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- ["As a Language Model...": Chat Template Switches LLM Self-Referential Voice and Activation Steering Reproduces It](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25021/) (2026)
- [Anthropomorphism in the age of Large Language Models: An overview of potential risks and mitigations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38486/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

An Artificially Intelligent system (an AI) has debatable personhood if it's epistemically possible either that the AI is a person or that it falls far short of personhood. Debatable personhood is a likely outcome of AI development and might arise soon. Debatable AI personhood throws us into a catastrophic moral dilemma: Either treat the systems as moral persons and risk sacrificing real human interests for the sake of entities without interests worth the sacrifice, or don't treat the systems as moral persons and risk perpetrating grievous moral wrongs against them. The moral issues become even more perplexing if we consider cases of possibly conscious AI that are subhuman, superhuman, or highly divergent from us in their morally relevant properties.