Norberto Nuno Gomes de Andrade (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies) has posted Future Trends in the Regulation of Personal Identity and Legal Personality in the Context of Ambient Intelligence Environments: The Right to Multiple Identities and the Rise of the Aivatars (The Law of the Future and the Future of Law, S. Muller, S. Zouridis, M. Frishman and L. Kistemaker (eds.), Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, Oslo. FICHL Publication Series No. 11 (2011) – pp. 567 – 585) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
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This think piece analyses two major challenges for the development of law brought by the so-called vision of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). AmI reflects a prospective scenario where the human will be surrounded by a seamless environment of computing, advanced networking technology and specific interfaces. Amidst the wide array of challenges posed by this vision of forthcoming reality, I focus on the issues of regulation of personal identity and of legal personification of a particular category of non-human actors. In relation to the former, I stress the need to rethink the right to personal identity, proposing a right to multiple identities. With respect to the latter, I emphasise the need to consider the possibility of endowing automated software agents with (some sort or degree of) legal personality.