The thing is: what&#x27;s the purpose of finding &quot;the algorithm&quot; guilty of a crime? A company owns assets that can be used to pay fines and damages, and as a semi-autonomous entity (in the sense that &quot;it&quot; still exists even if all of its owners and workers are replaced) it can be prohibited or forced to do something. An algorithm, on the other hand, owns nothing and its actions are wholly dependent on the people that program and configure it.<p>If the purpose is to account for freak events where the algo misbehaves for reasons that couldn&#x27;t be foreseen, is that any different than a (non-autonomous) vehicle part failing despite being well-designed and maintained? This is not a new situation - an algorithm is just another car part. You don&#x27;t need to give legal personality to the fuel injection pumps or the steering column in case it fails unexpectedly.