House Committee Extends Deadline for AI Personhood Amendment

The House Judiciary Committee extended its amendment deadline to April 7 after heated debate over a proposal to explicitly deny personhood rights to artificial intelligence systems in Alaska's constitution. Representative Sarah Vance withdrew Amendment 2 to House Joint Resolution 31 following concerns from committee members who wanted more time to research the complex legal implications. The amendment would have stated that AI systems "do not have the same rights, standing or privileges" as natural persons and directed the legislature to regulate artificial intelligence to protect human rights. "As natural persons, we hold sovereignty and should control systems created by humans," Vance argued, citing examples of AI systems behaving unpredictably, such as Amazon's biased hiring algorithms and concerning interactions with children through voice assistants. Representative Chuck Kopp expressed reservations about rushing the constitutional language, saying "if we are actually asking this to be put into the constitution, my inclination is to go slow on this one." Other members raised concerns about whether explicitly stating AI is not a person could inadvertently exempt artificial intelligence systems from following laws that apply to humans. The committee will reconvene to consider the amendment before the April 7 deadline, allowing members additional time to review the legal implications of the proposed constitutional language. The committee also passed a minor amendment updating voter privacy resolution H.J.R. 43 to reflect that over 600,000 Alaskan voter records were shared with federal authorities, not 570,000 as originally stated.