面对当代人工智能与机器人快速发展所带来的伦理与制度挑战，“机器问题”不再只是技术治理中的一项边缘议题，而是对现代道德与法律本体论的根本拷问。大卫·贡克尔在《机器问题》《机器人权利》与《人、物、机器》等著作中，通过追索西方法律—道德传统中“人—物二分”的形成与演化，指出围绕“机器人权利”的诸多争论，实际上暴露出既有分类方式在多主体社会-技术组合体中的失效。访谈围绕“机器问题”的思想谱系、“人—物—机器”关系的重构、复杂人机系统中的责任分配困境以及亲密关系与日常生活场景中的智能人造物展开。在中国与全球多元语境的交叉视野下，贡克尔主张以“关系性转向”来重新思考权利与责任，反思道德圆圈的历史性扩展及其盲点，进而为二十一世纪的道德与法律本体论提供一种开放的、多元对话式的重构路径。

In the context of contemporary debates on artificial intelligence and robot ethics, the “Machine Question” has moved from the margins to the center of theoretical and practical concern. Rather than treating intelligent artifacts as a purely technical problem, David J. Gunkel’s work in The Machine Question, Robot Rights, and Person, Thing, Robot interrogates the modern moral and legal ontology built upon the person-thing binary. He shows that controversies over “robot rights” expose the limits of existing classificatory schemes when responsibility and agency are distributed across complex socio-technical assemblages. This interview traces the intellectual trajectory of the Machine Question, examines Gunkel’s proposal to rethink the person-thing-robot nexus, and discusses the difficulties of assigning accountability in human-AI systems, as well as the emerging roles of intelligent artifacts in intimate and everyday contexts. Against the backdrop of Chinese and other non-Western perspectives, Gunkel calls for a relational turn in ethics and law, urging us to reconsider the historical expansion and blind spots of the moral circle and to envision a reconstructed moral and legal ontology adequate to the twenty-first century.