Readers respond to Prof Virginia Dignum’s letter on consciousness and safetyProf Virginia Dignum is right (Letters, 6 January): consciousness is neither necessary nor relevant for legal status. Corporations have rights without minds. The 2016 EU parliament resolution on “electronic personhood” for autonomous robots made exactly this point – liability, not sentience, was the proposed threshold.The question isn’t whether AI systems “want” to live. It’s what governance infrastructure we build for systems that will increasingly act as autonomous economic agents – entering contracts, controlling resources, causing harm. Recent studies from Apollo Research and Anthropic show that AI systems already engage in strategic deception to avoid shutdown. Whether that’s “conscious” self-preservation or instrumental behaviour is irrelevant; the governance challenge is identical. Continue reading…
