Ensuring Accountability for Robots and AI under Criminal Law

Autonomous robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are increasingly involved in the commission of criminal offenses, resulting in questions as to who is accountable for such crimes and how human–machine interactions influence criminal responsibility. This chapter first elaborates upon the conditions of machine responsibility and explains why technical systems cannot be granted personhood under today’s criminal law. It then discusses the challenges that complex human–machine interactions bring in terms of the attribution of criminal responsibility, before outlining options regarding how they might be met. Human–machine interactions should be understood as a form of distributed agency. It is therefore essential to define what a legitimate delegation of agency to a machine is. As this chapter shows, this could lead to a modified understanding of the attribution of action under criminal law, or even new norms specifically designed to address automation. Ensuring accountability under criminal law for robots and AI means holding actors accountable who cede agency to such technologies in bad or unjustified ways.