Join Duke Law professor James Boyle to explore questions of how artificial intelligence may challenge our notions of personhood as it advances and claims of consciousness become more credible, which comprise his new book The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood.

Chatbots like ChatGPT have challenged human exceptionalism: we are no longer the only beings capable of generating language and ideas fluently. Chatbots are not conscious. But what happens in the future if the claims to consciousness are more credible?  In The Line, James Boyle explores what these changes might do to our concept of personhood, to “the line” we believe separates our species from the rest of the world, but also separates “persons” with legal rights from objects.

Click for a preview of the first two chapters.

The Line is published by The MIT Press and will be released as a physical volume for purchase, but also as a free open access ebook download, made possible by the Duke University Libraries' Open Monograph Award. Join the Libraries in celebrating the release of The Line and open access to groundbreaking Duke research!