No Hands on the Keyboard: Agentic AI and the Limits of Criminal Law

Criminal law needs a criminal. In the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, guilt requires a person who intended the act. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Computer Misuse Act 1990 were written for humans at keyboards. Agentic AI removes the keyboard. When a system chooses its own targets, adapts and executes an intrusion without direct instruction, investigators are left with damage and no one to charge. The operator may not have known. The developer sits in another jurisdiction. The software cannot stand trial. This session explains the gap in plain terms and why it matters to anyone defending a network. We cover how the statutes actually work, why intent is the sticking point, and where liability is starting to land on the organisations that deploy these systems. Attendees leave knowing what evidence to preserve, what to report, and what to tell the board.