Estonia to address the legal status of AI

Estonia is said to be working on legislation aimed to address the legal status of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The country’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications is considering the creation of the term ‘robot-agent’, something which would place AI between having a separate legal personality and being an object that is someone else’s property. The ministry, however, needs to gather political support to go ahead with this idea. Siim Sikkut, Estonian government’s Chief Information Officer, sees advantages in giving AI the same legal status as natural and legal persons, noting that ‘if we seize this opportunity as a government, we could be one of the trail blazers’.