It may sound strange, but future Nobel Prizes, and other scientific achievement awards, one day might well be given out to intelligent machines. It could come down just to technicalities and legalities.

Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel established the prestigious prizes in his will, written in 1895, a year before his death. He created a fund whose interests would be distributed annually “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.

Nobel explained how to divide those interests in equal parts, to be given, “one part to the person who made the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics… the most important chemical discovery… the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine”.

He also created prizes for the person responsible for the most outstanding work of literature and to the person who did most to advance fellowship among nations, oppose war and promote peace (the peace prize).

What should we draw from the use of the term “person” in Alfred Nobel’s will? The Nobel peace prize can be awarded to institutions and associations, so could it include other non-human entities, such as an AI system?

Whether an AI is entitled to legal personhood is one important question in all this. Another is whether intelligent machines can make scientific contributions worthy of one of Nobel’s prestigious prizes.

I do not consider either condition to be impossible and I am not alone. A group of scientists at the UK’s Alan Turing Institute has already set this as a........

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