Can I kill people with my autonomous drone?
<p>If I were to deploy an autonomous drone that went around shooting people, what could I be convicted of?</p>

<p>Suppose that all decisions were made by the drone, and <em>I had no intent of this happening</em>.  E.g., perhaps I wrote an algorithm that discerned between what and what not to shoot, but a <em>bug</em> slipped in that caused it to shoot people.</p>

<p>Although it's, in my opinion, subjective, I'd say that the possibility of the drone killing someone would be one that came across the deployer's mind, but, still didn't expect to happen. Sort of like a nuclear power plant melting down.</p>

<p>Contrarily, what if I did design the drone to shoot people, but I didn't actually pull the trigger?</p>

<p>In the US, it depends on the jurisdiction because each state has its own homicide statutes: but, the defining elements don't differ a lot. Drawing on <a href="http://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9a.32&amp;full=true#9A.32.020" rel="noreferrer">Washington state law</a>, the first question is whether you intended to kill a person (it doesn't have to be a specific person). If you did, you have committed first-degree murder. It is first-degree murder, because it requires a certain amount of advance planning to kill with a drone. It does not matter that the drone houses the gun that killed the person and a program determines when the gun fires (the "it was the drone, not me" defense gets you nowhere: otherwise, you could always claim "It wasn't me, it was my gun / knife / fist".)</p>

<p>If instead this is a badly-designed pig-slaughtering drone, then it could be manslaughter in the first degree, if the act was reckless, or manslaughter in the second degree, if the act was with criminal negligence. To determine which it is, you look at the <a href="http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.08.010" rel="noreferrer">definitions</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>A person is reckless or acts recklessly when he or she knows of and
  disregards a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or
  her disregard of such substantial risk is a gross deviation from
  conduct that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>versus</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>A person is criminally negligent or acts with criminal negligence when
  he or she fails to be aware of a substantial risk that a wrongful act
  may occur and his or her failure to be aware of such substantial risk
  constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a
  reasonable person would exercise in the same situation.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So it would depend on whether you decided that safeguards which would prevent shooting people were too much bother (you know there is a risk and set aside that concern), or it didn't occur to you that a flying gun might hurt a person. </p>

<p>UK answer:</p>

<p>Murder requires 2 things, intention to commit murder, and the causing of someone's death.</p>

<p>It's easy enough to prove that you physically caused the death of anyone that your autonomous drone kills, since if you didn't activate/program/launch the drone in the first place, these people would still be alive.</p>

<p>Regarding the intention to commit murder, intention can be inferred even if you didn't want people to die from your robot. When you know that your actions will very likely cause the death of people (that death was "virtually certain" from your actions) then the law would accept that as intention to kill someone, even though technically you didn't want someone to die.</p>

<p>Therefore you would be convicted of murder.</p>

criminal-law murder weapons drones