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About

Gabriel Lima is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence ethics, legal theory, and public perception. His scholarship focuses on some of the most pressing and philosophically charged questions in AI governance: whether artificial intelligence and robots should be granted rights, legal personhood, or moral standing, and how the general public actually thinks about these issues. Lima's most significant contributions involve large-scale empirical studies that ground abstract legal and philosophical debates in real-world human attitudes. His widely cited work on AI and robot rights — attracting over 50 citations — examines public perceptions of "electronic personalities," a concept controversially proposed by the European Parliament. Through surveys reaching thousands of participants, he has consistently revealed a striking "punishment gap": while people intuitively feel AI should be held accountable for wrongdoing, existing legal frameworks make such accountability deeply problematic. Extending this inquiry, Lima has also explored the moral standing of AI systems in creative domains, using AI-generated art as a lens to probe how social relationships shape our ethical obligations toward machines. With a growing body of work accumulating over 160 citations, Lima is establishing himself as a vital empirical voice in debates that will shape the future of AI regulation, human-robot interaction, and the boundaries of legal personhood.