When AI Breaks the Law: Rethinking Mens Rea in the Age of Autonomous System

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-547-8_17How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence; Criminal Liability; Mens Rea; Autonomous Systems; Developer Liability

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has quickly shifted to the periphery of fantasy and the core of human decision-making of humans, challenging the very principles by which criminal law has always been built. The crux of this interference is mens rea, the presence of a guilty mind on which intention, awareness, and moral agency are assumed. The AI systems, however, lack consciousness or emotion. Thus, their independent actions may cause damage in the real world, where the human agent cannot be easily identified. This conflict reveals a growing fault line in the law: how can a system built to judge human culpability respond when the culpability is of the algorithm?

The paper examines how the disturbances caused by the rise of AI affect the traditional principles of criminal liability under Indian laws, especially the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. It examines the hypothetical impossibility of assigning mens rea to machines, the practical ineffectiveness of the existing laws, and the dangers of uncontrolled and unregulated autonomy. Basing its arguments on the comparative experience of other jurisdictions, the paper finds a way forward in reform, including the clarification of AI-specific definitions, the creation of risk-based negligence standards, and the development of accountability models that focus on human accountability and not on constraining innovation. Finally, it argues that the criminal justice system in India needs to develop wisely without sacrificing fairness, accountability, and the rule of law in a world in which algorithms are defining the destinies of humans more and more.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Renuka Renuka
AU  - Rohit Raj
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/05
TI  - When AI Breaks the Law: Rethinking Mens Rea in the Age of Autonomous System
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Socio Legal Intricacies of Artificial Intelligence (ICSLIAI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 140
EP  - 145
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-547-8_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-547-8_17
ID  - Renuka2026
ER  -