CORPORATE CRIMINAL LIABILITY FOR AI-INDUCED CYBERSECURITY FAILURES IN HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS

Abstract

Introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into healthcare systems has transformed care, diagnosis, and management of hospitals wholly. Nevertheless, the breakneck speed of implementation of AI technologies has also resulted in the presentation of the most severe cybersecurity-related problems because healthcare institutions are proving to be the last address of advanced and improved cyberattacks. These events are commonly associated with the use of AI-based systems, which when not secured or constrained properly will lead to data hackings, system shutdowns, or other operational failures. However, even though such failures involved the most serious consequences, corporate criminal liability as such is not present, which is rather questionable as in regards to legal responsibility and social security.

This study examines how a corporation could be criminally responsible due to cybersecurity breaches caused or enhanced by AI applications in the medical field, especially in terms of philosophical implications. With a doctrinal approach of legal research reinforced by empirical evidence through case studies of the WannaCry-based attack on the NHS (UK), ransomware-based attack on the Universal Health Services (USA), and AI-based malfunctions that spill inviolable data in India, the research finds a lingering unwillingness of the extant laws to criminalise healthcare corporations even in the face of gross negligence.

The study establishes the inadequacy of classical concepts in criminal law, including mens rea (criminal intent), as applied to autonomous or black-box AI systems on the basis of both statutory frameworks at the jurisdictional level and judicial and scholarly commentary following qualitative investigation in jurisdictions that include India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. It also points to the absence of criminal legislation and the devolution of technical responsibility, as well as overconcentration on civil or administrative avenues of redress that together undermines legal deterrence.

The paper ends up by supporting the emergence of adaptive legal norms, including organizational mens rea, design-based liability paradigms, and AI accountability regimes, which are consistent with the changing landscape of corporate responsibility in the digital age. More so in the field of healthcare where the moral obligation is at stake, change in laws regarding corporate criminal liability is necessary to devise a way of safeguarding technological safety, accountability of institutions and protection of rights of the patient amidst the growing autonomy of systems.