Podcast / June 8, 2026
France: from Slavery to Corporate Personhood to Artificial Intelligence: The Next Evolution of Property and Personhood
The Next Dred Scott Is Not About AI Personhood. It's About AI Property. When France recently repealed remnants of slavery-era legislation nearly two centuries after the abolition of slavery, many observers treated the event as symbolic. Slavery had long been abolished. No court was enforcing the ownership of human beings. No legislature was debating its return. Yet the repeal matters because it reminds us that legal systems often carry forward assumptions long after the societies that created them have moved on. Th
The Next Dred Scott Is Not About AI Personhood. It's About AI Property. When France recently repealed remnants of slavery-era legislation nearly two centuries after the abolition of slavery, many observers treated the event as symbolic. Slavery had long been abolished. No court was enforcing the ownership of human beings. No legislature was debating its return. Yet the repeal matters because it reminds us that legal systems often carry forward assumptions long after the societies that created them have moved on. The abolition of slavery was not merely a political or moral transformation. It was a profound transformation in legal ontology. It changed what kinds of things could be property. Read more on substack - https://jamesfeltonkeith.substack.com/p/france-from-slavery-to-corporate