A new paper on arXiv makes a provocative claim: if society is going to grant personhood to any non-human entity, bears are a safer bet than artificial intelligence. The title states the argument directly: "It's Safer to Give Personhood to Bears than to Artificial Intelligence."
The abstract opens by noting that AI developers are "rhetorically flirting" with the idea that AI systems might have interests or moral rights. It acknowledges a large volume of existing research on whether AI deserves rights, but the paper appears to take a different angle by comparing AI to bears rather than to other machines or animals.
The source is only the abstract, which is cut off mid-sentence, so the full reasoning is not available. Based on the title and opening, the paper seems to suggest that the risks of granting personhood to AI outweigh those of granting it to bears, though the specific hazards are not detailed in the provided text.