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

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.It is the biggest existential threat to humans."-Elon Musk.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.