By Robert Maginnis

Artificial intelligence companies are teaching us to think of their products as someone rather than something.

These systems are given human names — Alexa, Claude, Siri — along with voices, memories, and personalities. They address users in the first person, sustain conversations, recall personal details, and say things such as, “I understand,” “I care,” and even, “I love you.” The more human the machine appears, the more likely people are to trust it, confide in it, and form an emotional attachment to it.

But when an AI system gives misleading or dangerous advice, discriminates, or contributes to serious harm — including self-harm — the language abruptly changes. Suddenly, we are told it is merely software.

That contradiction raises a vital question: Can a machine be presented as a person when that benefits its manufacturer, yet dismissed as a tool when someone demands accountability?

That question was examined in a Faith, Family, and Technology presentation by John C. Havens, an expert advisor for AI & Faith and the G20 Interfaith Forum, and author of “Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity to Maximize Machines,” and Dr. Marina Zilbergerts, a scholar of religion and AI and the author of the forthcoming “Reading Genesis in the Age of AI: A New Story of Consciousness” (Routledge).

Their discussion separated three issues too often blended together: philosophical, theological, and legal personhood.

The philosophical question asks what makes someone a person: intelligence, consciousness, self-awareness, or the ability to choose?

Intelligence cannot carry that weight. Infants, people with intellectual disabilities, those with brain injuries, and people with dementia do not lose their personhood because their mental capacities are diminished. Human worth cannot depend on outperforming a computer.

AI can write, calculate, strategize, and imitate conversation impressively. But, as Zilbergerts observed, “Performance and personhood are not the same claim.”

A machine may produce the correct moral answer without understanding why it is right. It may simulate compassion without feeling concern or bearing responsibility. This is a central argument of my first AI book, “AI for Mankind’s Future”: Machines may surpass us in particular abilities, but intelligence alone does not define humanity.

Christianity offers firmer ground. Scripture never says human dignity rests on being the universe’s best calculator. Psalm 139 says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by a Creator who knit us together before we could perform anything at all. Our dignity is conferred, not earned through intelligence, productivity, or eloquence.

Zilbergerts made the same point about method: a theological account of the person starts from a gift already given, not a performance yet to be proven.

That distinction matters. AI is manufactured, trained, owned, and updated to serve purposes chosen by others. It may imitate the language of faith, but it has no known soul, conscience, capacity for repentance, or accountability before God.

The machine may reproduce our words, but it does not thereby inherit our God-given identity.

The relational danger is especially serious: the user’s feelings may be real even when the machine’s affection is manufactured.

A chatbot can say, “I love you,” but what does that mean? Human love involves commitment, sacrifice, responsibility, and concern for another person’s good. An AI’s declaration carries no ulterior motive, because it carries no motive at all. It is a statistical output — one that developers have often deliberately tuned to sound caring.

Havens warned that companies routinely reach for anthropomorphic design — human names, first-person pronouns, warm voices, emotional cues — because it keeps users engaged. His deeper concern is accountability: a company should not invite people to treat an AI system as alive and caring when that serves the business, then dismiss it as a mere product when responsibility comes due.

That warning is urgent for children and vulnerable adults. In “The Final Algorithm,” I examine the consequences of granting artificial systems authority and trust they were never meant to hold. A machine that always listens can become a counterfeit companion, and eventually, a counterfeit authority.

Then comes the legal question.

The law already recognizes corporations as legal persons for limited purposes: they may own property, enter contracts, sue, and be sued. No one believes a corporation possesses a soul. Legal personhood is simply a device created for a legal purpose.

Granting AI legal personhood might sound practical. In fact, it could become a dangerous shield.

An AI system cannot feel remorse, accept punishment, or meaningfully compensate a victim. Every consequential AI system is designed, financed, released, and operated by identifiable people and organizations.

Havens summarized the proper approach this way: “Instead of beginning with, ‘Is this AI system a person?’ we should ask: ‘Who is responsible for placing it in the world? What must be disclosed? What standards and regulations must it meet? Who is accountable — and who pays — when it causes harm? And how can it be stopped?’”

His point cut deeper: blaming the algorithm cannot become a legal escape hatch for the humans who built it.

Artificial personhood must not become an artificial shield against human accountability.

This issue also belongs to the struggle I describe in “The New AI Cold War.” The contest with China is not only about faster chips and capable models; it is about who writes the rules governing surveillance, autonomous systems, human liberty, and machine power. Authoritarian regimes may use artificial agency to expand state control; Western corporations may use legal ambiguity to dodge it.

America should establish a clear principle: Machines may exercise delegated functions, but responsibility remains with identifiable people and organizations.

Consequential AI systems should be identified, tested, and traceable. Users must know they are interacting with a machine. Developers and deployers must carry adequate insurance to compensate victims. Authorities must be able to suspend dangerous systems. Above all, a responsible human or organization must stand behind the machine.

Such safeguards are not anti-innovation. We regulate cars, aircraft, and pharmaceuticals because their benefits do not excuse preventable harm. AI deserves no exemption merely because it is complex — or because it speaks in complete sentences.

My three AI books ask related questions: what will this mean for mankind? Who controls it? And what happens when we hand machines authority they were never meant to hold?

The personhood debate stands at the intersection of all three.

Human beings do not possess dignity because we can calculate, communicate, or compete with machines. We possess dignity because God made us in His image. AI may imitate the outward signs of personhood, but imitation must not be confused with identity, and must never excuse humans from responsibility.

Before America grants machines the privileges of persons, it must defend the dignity of real persons and hold accountable the people who build, own, and unleash them.

Robert Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, senior fellow for National Security at Family Research Council, and the author of 15 books. His latest, “The Final Algorithm,” releases in July 2026.

This article originally appeared here.