Dr. Jaume Antich, during his speech at the 10th International Academic Meeting of the RAED
Jaume Antich, Secretary General of the International College of Criminal Lawyers and Numerary Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (READ), called for an update of International Criminal Law in response to the emergence of artificial intelligence in the lecture “Generative artificial intelligence: machines that decide”, which he presented during the 10th International Academic Meeting held by the Royal Academy between 15 and 20 March in several German cities under the general title “The Rhine as a current of knowledge: cross-border dialogues”. For the legal expert, although responsibility remains human, it is also increasingly organisational.
“The expansion of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and algorithmic decision-making poses a profound challenge to Criminal Law: how to attribute responsibility when action becomes diluted between machines, people and organisations. Faced with proposals that point to the algorithm’s responsibility or to solutions based solely on the outcome, I believe the real problem is not technological but dogmatic and organisational. Artificial intelligence does not act or decide in criminal-law terms, but it does reconfigure risk and amplify its effects, especially in complex business contexts. In view of this reality, the criminal liability of legal persons offers the most solid and rights-based response for prosecuting, preventing and detecting crimes committed through automated systems. By focusing attribution on organisational defects and on the management of algorithmic risk, Criminal Law can address the challenges of artificial intelligence without renouncing its fundamental principles, while at the same time strengthening the preventive function of criminal Compliance,” the speaker summarised.
The expert stressed that the answer does not lie in attributing criminal liability to algorithms, but in reinforcing the liability of legal persons, since AI does not act or decide in a criminal-law sense. Although its systems are increasingly autonomous and opaque, these tools remain instruments created, implemented and supervised by human beings within organisational structures, especially in business environments. The real challenge, he considered, is dogmatic and organisational: how to attribute responsibility when decision-making is fragmented among designers, programmers, managers and operators. When a company implements artificial intelligence systems without sufficient audit mechanisms, human supervision, data validation or error correction, it assumes a criminally relevant risk. That organisational failure, rather than the algorithm’s decision, may ground its criminal liability.
The academic pointed out that it is these companies that must implement prior risk assessments, decision traceability, regular audits and effective human controls. The absence of these measures may turn a technological system into an instrument of crime. Faced with algorithmic opacity and the fragmentation of authorship, the author warned of the danger of diluting the principle of culpability, because Criminal Law cannot renounce its requirement of personal and normative reproach, not even in the face of technological complexity. “AI intensifies and multiplies risks, but it does not create them out of nothing: it is prior human and organisational decisions that generate them,” he concluded.
Antich joined the READ last November with the speech “The criminal liability of legal persons before the International Criminal Court. A new opportunity to take up the challenge again”, in which he had already addressed these issues, defending the incorporation of the criminal liability of legal persons before the International Criminal Court, on the grounds that the current model, focused exclusively on individuals, is insufficient to address the most serious crimes of the 21st century, in which companies and transnational corporations may play a decisive and intentional role. Beyond artificial intelligence, the legal expert pointed to new global scenarios, including environmental disasters and armed conflicts involving corporate actors, which require this legal framework to be reviewed and expanded.
The academic is Professor of Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he also teaches on the Master’s Degree for Access to the Legal Profession and Court Representation, and has supervised numerous bachelor’s and master’s degree final projects. He is also Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law at the Institute of Public Security of Catalonia, has been Deputy Director of the Master’s Degree in International Criminal Justice of the International College of Criminal Lawyers and Rovira i Virgili University, and is also a lecturer on the Master’s Degree in Compliance of the Barcelona Bar Association. A practising lawyer since 2003, he heads his own firm in Barcelona, specialising in Criminal Law, International Criminal Law and Corporate Compliance. He is an honorary member of the European Higher Council of Doctors and Doctors Honoris Causa, a member of the International Association of Penal Law and a member of the Spanish Compliance Association, among other professional organisations.
Throughout his career, he has held various institutional positions, including President and Vice-President of the Young Lawyers Group, and Secretary of the Compliance Section and of the International Criminal Justice and Human Rights Committee of the Barcelona Bar Association, among others. He is the author of numerous scientific publications, has served as a speaker at more than 50 national and international conferences, and regularly collaborates with various media outlets as an expert. His lines of research focus on International Criminal Law, the criminal liability of legal persons and Compliance. He has just been appointed President of the International Criminal Justice and Human Rights Committee of the Barcelona Bar Association.
