There is a very interesting discussion going on over at The Volokh Conspiracy regarding whether legal doctrines, when applied to machines or computers, should treat the machines/computers as people.
Daire and Smith are interesting cases, I think, because the outcome apparently hinges on how to apply legal doctrines designed for people in the case of automated machines. The question is, do you treat the machine as a stand-in for a person, or do you treat it as something else? On one hand, the instinct to anthropomorphize computers seems natural; computers are designed to perform tasks on their user’s behalf, and it’s easy to model them as mechanical servants. On the other hand, computers are just machines, and pretending that they are people seems inappropriate in a wide range of cases.
Definitely check it out, and especially the comments – it’s quite an interesting question!