By Nick Eliades
The Technological Singularity, or Singularity for short, is a hypothetical point in the future when a super-intelligence, whether artificial or not, redefines civilization by achieving exponential gains in its own intelligence, and with its superior intelligence, significantly outperforms humans of even the highest intellect. The Singularity is not inevitable, but could occur through several means. The most popular version of the Singularity is by way of artificial intelligence; but nootropics, human-machine hybrids, genetic engineering, and other seemingly sci-fi alternatives could also potentially trigger the Singularity.
The key issue is whether and how to extend personhood to something that has super-human intelligence, regardless of whether its source is human or not. Though others have made broad attempts at defining a new legal test for personhood, have demonstrated that most tests would be problematic, or have drawn upon a specific area of law as analogy, the approach here is quite different. This article instead attempts to catalogue key U.S. Supreme Court decisions to indicate how previous characterizations of personhood may inform future decisions with regard to the Singularity.