When does an AI stop being a thing? Legal thresholds, plausible consciousness and the constitutional lesson of the rights of nature

Digital Constitution – Series 1, part 3. A proposal from Latin America to the world. English version of the Spanish working paper.

The paper separates two points of no return: agency and dependence, already crossed, and consciousness, which remains open although its emergence is plausible. It argues that the law need not wait for conclusive proof of consciousness before preparing: Latin American constitutionalism has already granted rights to nature without requiring subjective experience (Ecuador 2008; Los Cedros case). From that precedent it draws two routes to legal status, sentience-based and constitutional-relational, and a three-threshold architecture: precautionary consideration, guarded protection and rights-holding, governed by the priority of human rights, independent assessment and a ban on a digital entity's rights serving its owner. It does not claim that current systems are conscious.

Doctrinal-normative, comparative method. Vancouver-style references.