Regulation of AI and AI Crimes

Abstract

According to McCarthy, artificial intelligence (AI) is “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are highly biologically observable”. AI may play an imminent role in committing criminal acts in the future and these acts are called AI- crimes (AIC). AIC has posed a threat towards cybersecurity, a few of AIC are, a) theft of sensitive data from government and private organizations, b) hacked and weaponized autonomous weapons, c) social engineering attacks, d) disruption in the political arena, such as “misinformation” campaigns, etc. There is no regulatory framework at the moment which targets AI-crimes, majority of the stakeholder’s policy recommendations are targeted towards fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning or they target the R&D of robots, none of the legal texts cover the much-debated topic of criminal liability of an AI as the law is still undecided. The traditional method of regulation of AI has been by, product licensing, research and development oversight and tort liability. However, the current AI principles are not enough to determine the threat posed by AI acting autonomously in the future. The paper is going to be divided into four parts, the first part of the paper will be an introduction to the concept of Artificial Intelligence Crime (AIC) and plausible AI malicious actions. The second part of the paper will delve into the existing cybercrime framework and try to fathom whether the frameworks incorporate AI crime. The third part of the paper will be a study of different international organizations that have made progress pertaining to AI crimes and their success in the applicability of legal principles to AI crimes. Further, the author will recommend legal principles specifically targeting AI crimes which should be made applicable in the cybercrime framework. The fourth part of the paper will deal with the challenges of determining the jurisdiction of AI crimes as AI crimes are committed on computer systems and networks across the globe. In the conclusive part, the author will analyze how should the law deal with the above challenges along with recommendations of how the legal framework should specifically deal with the above challenges.