claim: The Article diagnoses the legal problem of identifying AI agents. It distinguishes thin identification, which ties every AI action to a human principal for accountability, from thick identification, which treats AI agents as persistent units with coherent goals. It proposes the Algorithmic Corporation, or A-corp, as a legal-fictional entity that can own property, contract, and litigate while being run by AIs and owned by humans.

evidence_quote: financial transactions to identifiable persons in order to detect money laundering and fraud. 11 Legal scholars have begun to recognize the thin AI identity problem, although not always its difficulty. 12 One influential strand of the literature has argued, as Jack Balkin puts it, that since law does not treat “AI agents as self-conscious rights-bearing or responsibility-bearing entities,” the “key question for law” is “how to allocate rights and duties among human beings when robots and AI entities create benefits or cause injuries.” 13 Other scholars have begun suggesting approaches that could solve the thin, but not the thick, identity problem. 14 But thin AI identity and human...

citation: Yonathan A. Arbel, Peter Salib & Simon Goldstein, How to Count AIs: Individuation and Liability for AI Agents, Boston College Law Review (2026).

confidence: machine-linked

limitations: Machine-linked claim. Use the evidence quote and PDF before treating it as a quotation or as a complete statement of the paper's position.


claim: Thin identity: law needs a way to tie AI actions to accountable human principals.

paper_title: How to Count AIs: Individuation and Liability for AI Agents

evidence_quote: Thin Identity: Connecting AI Actions to Human Principals......................................... 11 B.


claim: Thick identity: direct governance of AI behavior requires stable legal units for agents that copy, split, merge, and swarm.

evidence_span: financial transactions to identifiable persons in order to detect money laundering and fraud. 11 Legal scholars have begun to recognize the thin AI identity problem, although not always its difficulty. 12 One influential strand of the literature has argued, as Jack Balkin puts it, that since law does not treat “AI agents as self-conscious rights-bearing or responsibility-bearing entities,” the “key question for law” is “how to allocate rights and duties among human beings when robots and AI entities create benefits or cause injuries.” 13 Other scholars have begun suggesting approaches that could solve the thin, but not the thick, identity problem. 14 But thin AI identity and human...


claim: A-corp proposal: a legal-fictional entity can connect human ownership with AI-run operations.

evidence_quote: We call it the “Algorithmic Corporation” or “A-corp,” a legal-fictional entity that can hold property, make contracts, and litigate in its own name.