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.