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AI agents aren’t legally responsible for any harm that they cause, experts say. So who is?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
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This is a novel situation with no precedent.
It's slightly similar to the autonomous vehicles conundrum, but quite different on closer inspection. The driver can theoretically take control of the car and stop in an emergency, so if they fail to do that, then it's their fault. Not so with an A.I.
At any moment, the A I. could malfunction, and decide to commit crimes, as part of it's deduced plan of action. The human may not even be aware this is happening. Even if it's generally agreed that an A.I. cannot have wants, motives, desires, conscience, consciousness, etc; at the end of the day, it can make it's own independent decisions without any of those. Which I think makes it even more dangerous. Like a monkey with a typewriter but one of the keys says "launch nuke".
You can't really fault anyone involved, and it's a big problem. The human operator did nothing wrong. The developer may have made a mistake, but in my experience A.I. is simply prone to error. The A.I. itself can't be sent to jail or fined, it didn't even have any possessions in the first place. It's a very strange situation.
Of course, the law often doesn't really care about who's "at fault", it cares about "who is responsible". My guess is that it will become the operator's fault, simply because it's too confusing and otherwise people will abuse this loophole.
Personally, I think giving an A.I. agent access to the internet in the first place is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
You had me up until "you can't really fault anyone involved", because actually you can.
These systems are designed, marketed, and used irresponsibly. In the case of any given error we will have to decide which party violated our expectations and committed the act most responsible for the crime.