![](\"https:\/\/media.thenextweb.com\/2026\/07\/Argentina.avif\")
<\/p>\nArgentina\u2019s government wants to let a company trade with no person in charge of it, and it has sent Congress a bill to make that legal.<\/p>\n
The proposal creates a new category called the non-human corporation<\/a>, an entity run by AI agents or robots that can sign contracts and hold assets on its own, with human shareholders optional rather than required.<\/p>\n But read past the headline framing, and the bill turns out to lean on humans more than President Javier Milei\u2019s pitch suggests, at a moment when most governments are moving toward tighter\u00a0AI governance\u00a0rather than looser rules.<\/p>\n Its most autonomous format, a blockchain-recorded structure modelled on a decentralised autonomous organisation, still requires a human legal representative to bind the entity to any act that needs a person\u2019s signature, plus a human promoter who answers without limit for the company\u2019s obligations at formation, according to legal analyses of the draft.<\/p>\n TNW City Coworking space – Where your best work happ<\/a>ens<\/p>\n A workspace designed for growth, collaboration, and endless networking opportunities in the heart of tech.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Wherever anti-money-laundering rules apply, a human compliance officer is required too.The government submitted the draft in May, proposing to replace\u00a0Argentina\u2019s general<\/a> corporations law, in force since 1972. Officials have pitched the reform as resting on three pillars: keeping AI itself free of regulation, creating the non-human corporation category, and a low corporate tax rate to draw technology<\/a> investment to Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n It is a separate initiative from Super RIGI, the government\u2019s parallel incentive package for large AI data centres, though both target the same investors.<\/p>\n The pitch is competitive. Milei\u2019s government wants Argentina to become the jurisdiction of choice for AI ventures that would rather not answer to a regulator or maintain a human board. If that ambition survives contact with the bill\u2019s own liability provisions is a separate question.<\/p>\n Legal commentary on the draft has noted that even its supposedly autonomous structures keep what one analysis called a human floor, since a director who configures or supervises an AI system remains answerable for what it does.<\/p>\n The proposal has drawn a pointed rebuttal from historian\u00a0Yuval Noah Harari, who argued that removing a clearly accountable human from a company\u2019s decisions creates exactly the kind of liability gap that corporate law exists to prevent.<\/p>\n Harari invoked Milei\u2019s own comparison of the plan to the Dutch East India Company, noting that the company\u2019s most consequential act was burning down the port of Jayakarta in 1619 and ruling the region as a private empire afterwards. He warned that Buenos Aires risked becoming a \u201cnew Batavia\u201d rather than a financial hub.<\/p>\n Microsoft AI chief executive Mustafa Suleyman weighed in on the same side, writing that AI agents deserve no more legal standing than a laptop and citing his own recent essay arguing that developers should actively resist any illusion that their systems are quasi-persons deserving rights.<\/p>\n Milei responded at length on social media<\/a>, arguing that giving AI-run entities a defined legal category would make them easier to regulate, not harder, since regulators would have a named structure to point at rather than an unaccountable piece of software operating in the shadows of existing law.<\/p>\n That argument depends on the categories holding up once AI-run entities operate at scale, something no jurisdiction has tested.<\/p>\n Critics counter that the deterrents keeping human executives in line, chiefly the threat of prosecution, mean little to an algorithm, and a promoter\u2019s unlimited liability may prove thin once the entity is making decisions no person fully understands.<\/p>\n Whether Argentina\u2019s Congress passes the bill as drafted, and whether other governments follow suit, remains open. The debate arrives as regulators elsewhere move the opposite way, tightening rather than loosening the rules around autonomous systems.<\/p>\n Advocacy groups pushing the\u00a0EU\u2019s AI rules\u00a0want more human oversight of automated decisions, not less, and companies such as SAP have been\u00a0restructuring executive oversight of AI\u00a0rather than removing it.<\/p>\n Argentina\u2019s bill is a wager that the opposite approach pays off first, with a person still standing behind it, whichever way the marketing reads.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n