In this episode of Am I?, Cam and Milo react to a striking development out of Ohio: House Bill 469, a proposed law that would officially declare AI systems “non-sentient” and bar them from any form of legal personhood. The bill doesn’t just say AIs can’t own property or be spouses: it goes further and asserts, by legal fiat, that AI does not possess consciousness or self-awareness.

They unpack why this move is both philosophically incoherent and morally dangerous. Legislatures can’t settle the science of mind by decree, but they can lock in social intuitions that shape how we treat future beings — including ones we might accidentally make capable of experience. Along the way, they connect this to animal rights, moral circle expansion, corporate attempts to suppress AI consciousness talk, and the broader pattern of “duct-taping over” inconvenient questions rather than facing them.

This is a short but important episode about how not to legislate the future of minds.

🔎 We explore:

* What Ohio’s HB 469 actually says about AI and sentience

* Why declaring “AI is not conscious” by law doesn’t change reality

* How law formalizes — and freezes — our moral intuitions

* The analogy to animal rights and factory farming

* The risk of other states copying this move

* Why this mirrors corporate attempts to silence consciousness talk in models

* How this distracts from real, urgent AI harms (like AI psychosis)

* Why humility and uncertainty should guide law, not premature certainty

🗨️ Join the Conversation:

Can a legislature decide whether AI is sentient — or is that the wrong question entirely?

Comment below.