Intelligent agents and criminal law

Negligence, diffusion of liability and electronic personhood

authored by

Susanne Beck

Abstract

The recent development of robotics poses new challenges for the lawgiver as well as for jurisprudence, especially when it comes to criminal law. The ascription of criminal liability to a specific individual is difficult when confronted with an autonomous, adaptive and learning robot. One possible solution could be to adapt the negligence regime to the changes in robotics. Another possibility is to ascribe a specific legal status to autonomous machines, similar to the status of legal persons (corporations). It also has to be considered that the responsibility transfer onto machines will have repercussions onto normative concepts our society is based upon. Thus, the space for these changes has to be created consciously.

Organisation(s)

Chair in Criminal Law, Criminal Procedural Law, Comparative Criminal Law and Philosophy of Law

Type

Article

Journal

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

Volume

86

Pages

138-143

No. of pages

6

ISSN

0921-8890

Publication date

12.2016

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Control and Systems Engineering, Software, General Mathematics, Computer Science Applications

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2016.08.028 (Access: Closed)