Elina Nerantzi

Machines powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly taking over tasks previously performed by humans alone. In accomplishing such tasks, they may intentionally commit ‘AI crimes’, ie engage in behaviour which would be considered a crime if it were accomplished by humans. For instance, an advanced AI trading agent may—despite its designer’s best efforts—autonomously manipulate markets while lacking the properties for being held criminally responsible. In such cases (hard AI crimes) a criminal responsibility gap emerges since no agent (human or artificial) can be legitimately punished for this outcome. We aim to shift the ‘hard AI crime’ discussion from blame to deterrence and design an ‘AI deterrence paradigm’, separate from criminal law and inspired by the economic theory of crime. The homo economicus has come to life as a machina economica, which, even if cannot be meaningfully blamed, can nevertheless be effectively deterred since it internalises criminal sanctions as costs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents are often compared to psychopaths in popular news articles. The headlines are ‘eye-catching’, but the questions of what this analogy means or why it matters are hardly answered. The aim of this paper is to take this popular analogy ‘seriously’. By that, I mean two things. First, I aim to explore the scope of this analogy, i.e. to identify and analyse the shared properties of AI agents and psychopaths, namely, their lack of moral emotions and their capacity for instrumental rationality. Second, I aim to examine the impact of the analogy. I argue that both agents, as ‘amoral calculators’, present the perfect candidates to revisit two long-standing debates on moral and criminal responsibility, regarding the necessity of moral emotions for ‘moral-agent-capacity responsibility’ and the necessity of ‘moral-agent-capacity responsibility’ for criminal responsibility. Finally, cross-examining the debates on the moral and criminal responsibility of psychopaths and AI agents is instructive and revealing. Instructive since the moral and legal treatment of psychopaths can be telling about the future treatment of AI agents (and vice versa) and revealing since it makes explicit our often-implicit philosophical commitments on the criteria of moral agency and the overarching purpose of criminal law.