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15 Canberra L. Rev. 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/canbera15 and id is 1 raw text is: Arnold & Gough, 'Turing's People' TURING'S PEOPLE: PERSONHOOD, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE BRUCE BAER ARNOLD AND DREW GOUGH' ABSTRACT What is legal personhood? Many people understand personhood - and by extension law - through depictions in popular culture. The contemporaryfeaturefilmfor example provides a lens through which non-specialists (people without a background in information technology, philosophy and law) can make sense of humanoid robots and distributed artificial intelligence (AI), entities that perform as 'human'. Such an understanding is increasingly salient as AI becomes a pervasive but under-recognised aspect of daily life, and continues to evolve in its sophistication and complexity, provoking questions about rights, responsibilities and regulation regarding artificial entities that are independent rather than autonomous. The article accordingly analyses depictions of personhood in films such as Ex Machina, WarGames, Alien and Alien Covenant, Forbidden Planet, RoboCop and AI. It suggests that popular culture has an uncertain grasp of legal personhood but provokes thought and tells us something useful about the difference between human animals, non-human animals, corporations and new artificial persons. Those differences will be legally and culturally contested in the emerging age of smart machines and governance by algorithm. Legal personhood is a strange creature, more omnipresent but less colourful than the creatures featured on screen in films such as Metropolis, 2 Prometheus and Alien I Dr Bruce Baer Arnold is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law & Justice at the University of Canberra. His work has appeared in Melbourne University Law Review and other journals, along with chapters on digital cities, privacy and secrecy. His current research focuses on regulatory incapacity at the intersection of public health, consumer protection and technology. Mr Drew Gough is an Information Technology consultant who has worked across federal, state and local government. His area of expertise is IT security and high availability infrastructure and disaster recovery. He is the creator and primary contributor to the technology and gaming blog ConstantlyRespawning.com. Work on law, code and ethics in learning platforms is forthcoming. 2 Metropolis (Directed by Fritz Lang, Universum Film, 1927). 1 Canberra Law Review (2017) 15(l)

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