mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Pragmatic View of AI Personhood

arXiv 2510.26396 ↗First posted 30 Oct 2025cs.AIcited by 12

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks

Abstract (arXiv)

The emergence of agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to trigger a "Cambrian explosion" of new kinds of personhood. This paper proposes a pragmatic framework for navigating this diversification by treating personhood not as a metaphysical property to be discovered, but as a flexible bundle of obligations (rights and responsibilities) that societies confer upon entities for a variety of reasons, especially to solve concrete governance problems. We argue that this traditional bundle can be unbundled, creating bespoke solutions for different contexts. This will allow for the creation of practical tools -- such as facilitating AI contracting by creating a target "individual" that can be sanctioned -- without needing to resolve intractable debates about an AI's consciousness or rationality. We explore how individuals fit in to social roles and discuss the use of decentralized digital identity technology, examining both "personhood as a problem", where design choices can create "dark patterns" that exploit human social heuristics, and "personhood as a solution", where conferring a bundle of obligations is necessary to ensure accountability or prevent conflict. By rejecting foundationalist quests for a single, essential definition of personhood, this paper offers a more pragmatic and flexible way to think about integrating AI agents into our society.

Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 33 of its 167 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Oct 2025.

Builds on

33 of 167 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Should agentic conversational AI change how we think about ethics? Characterising an interactional ethics centred on respect17 Jan
  2. 2022Improving alignment of dialogue agents via targeted human judgements28 Sep

Other references · 31

  1. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  2. 2022Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 3,634
  3. 2022Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samplescited by 737
  4. 2017Counterfactual Multi-Agent Policy Gradientscited by 733
  5. 2023Role-Play with Large Language Modelscited by 290
  6. 2024LLM Agents Grounded in Self-Reports Enable General-Purpose Simulation of Individualscited by 235
  7. 2024OR-Bench: An Over-Refusal Benchmark for Large Language Modelscited by 222
  8. 2025Multi-Agent Risks from Advanced AIcited by 150
  9. 2023Generative agent-based modeling with actions grounded in physical, social, or digital space using Concordiacited by 119
  10. 2024On the Conversational Persuasiveness of Large Language Models: A Randomized Controlled Trialcited by 105
  11. 2023Welfare Diplomacy: Benchmarking Language Model Cooperationcited by 43
  12. 2025Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Developmentcited by 42
19 more
  1. 2017Society-in-the-Loop: Programming the Algorithmic Social Contractcited by 35
  2. 2024AI Companions Reduce Lonelinesscited by 28
  3. 2024A theory of appropriateness with applications to generative artificial intelligencecited by 25
  4. 2021A learning agent that acquires social norms from public sanctions in decentralized multi-agent settingscited by 24
  5. 2022Law Informs Code: A Legal Informatics Approach to Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Humanscited by 23
  6. 2023Computers as Bad Social Actors: Dark Patterns and Anti-Patterns in Interfaces that Act Sociallycited by 20
  7. 2025An Economy of AI Agentscited by 17
  8. 2025Virtual Agent Economiescited by 17
  9. 2024Generative Ghosts: Anticipating Benefits and Risks of AI Afterlivescited by 15
  10. 2024Personhood credentials: Artificial intelligence and the value of privacy-preserving tools to distinguish who is real onlinecited by 15
  11. 2020Model-free conventions in multi-agent reinforcement learning with heterogeneous preferencescited by 13
  12. 2024Characterizing and modeling harms from interactions with design patterns in AI interfacescited by 11
  13. 2018The Dynamics of Norm Change in the Cultural Evolution of Languagecited by 8
  14. 2025Multi-Actor Generative Artificial Intelligence as a Game Enginecited by 8
  15. 2021Normative Disagreement as a Challenge for Cooperative AIcited by 7
  16. 2025Towards a Theory of AI Personhoodcited by 6
  17. 2025Can We Govern the Agent-to-Agent Economy?cited by 6
  18. 2020Who Watches the Watchmen? A Review of Subjective Approaches for Sybil-resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocolscited by 4
  19. 2025Intergenerational Support for Deepfake Scams Targeting Older Adultscited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.

12 papers.

  1. 2026AI Identity: Standards, Gaps, and Research Directions for AI Agentscited by 5
  2. 2026A Case Study on Emergent Cheating and Whistleblowing in Autonomous Research Swarmscited by 3
  3. 2026Post-AGI Economies: Autonomy and the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economicscited by 2
  4. 2026Memory as Ontology: A Constitutional Memory Architecture for Persistent Digital Citizenscited by 1
  5. 2026Solipsistic Superintelligence is Unlikely to be Cooperativecited by 1
  6. 2026Rethinking Psychometric Evaluation of LLMs: When and Why Self-Reports Predict Behaviorcited by 1
  7. 2026The Sentience Readiness Index: A Preliminary Framework for Measuring National Preparedness for the Possibility of Artificial Sentiencecited by 0
  8. 2026Distributed Legal Infrastructure for a Trustworthy Agentic Webcited by 0
  9. 2026The Possibility of Artificial Intelligence Becoming a Subject and the Alignment Problemcited by 0
  10. 2026Precautionary Governance of Autonomous AI: Legal Personhood as Functional Instrumentcited by 0
  11. 2026Appearing Legitimate is Not Enough: Interrogating Synthetic Agents in Representational Processes through a Participatory Design Lenscited by 0
  12. 2026Tapes Together Strong: The Co-evolution of Computation and Cooperationcited by 0

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  5. 2026No One to Blame: A Framework of Constitutive AI Unaccountability
  6. 2026A three-dimensional typology of agency for advanced AI systems
  7. 2026Sovereign Agents: Towards Infrastructural Sovereignty and Diffused Accountability in Decentralized AI
  8. 2025From Values to Frameworks: A Qualitative Study of Ethical Reasoning in Agentic AI Practitioners