On June 11, 2021, the firstlecture ofDean's Forumof New Silk Road Law School Alliance(NSRLSA)was held.Simon Chesterman, Dean and Provost's Chair Professor of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore, has deliveredthe first lecture online one the topic“We, the Robots? Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Legal Personality” to the faculty and studentsfromtheUASR and NSRLSA. The lecture was hosted by Shan Wenhua,Deanof School of Law,Xi 'an Jiaotong University, and Lei Yanjun,DeputyDirector ofDepartment of International Cooperation&Exchanges gave a welcomingspeech.

Professor Chesterman began his lecture with two classic questions: "Should we regulate artificial intelligence（should we）?" and "Can we regulate artificial intelligence（can we）?" Professor Chesterman then introduced the development history of artificial intelligence: As AI systems become more complex and play an important role in society, more and more people believe that they should have some form of legal personality. Professor believes that while most legal systems can create a new legal personality for AI, that is not enough to justify their doing so.

Whether the legal personality is given based on instrumental or inherent aspects of AI is a matter of debate. Much of the argument is based on the "instrumental nature" of AI, which explicitly or implicitly implies that when AI reaches the point of being "indistinguishable" from humans, i.e.isable to pass the Turing test, they should be entitled to a legal status comparable to that of a natural person. In the lecture,Professor Chesterman carried on the detailed idea about the similarity between artificial intelligence and corporate legal personality in detail from theory, practice, and the content of the personality right and punish the reason of error behavior of artificial intelligence.Healso explained the similarity between artificial intelligence and natural persons based on the "inner attribute", and discussed the scene when artificial intelligence reaches or even surpasses human intelligence.

A new work by Dean Chesterman：We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law（CUP, 2021）

During the Q&A session, teachers and students from many countries and schools had a heated and in-depth discussion with Professor Chesterman about the lecture. The lecture ended successfully in a warm atmosphere.

Silk Road Law School Alliance(SRLSA) was established on December 11, 2015, which is one of the sub-alliances of the University Alliance of the Silk Road.