> If more expensive and consequential incidents happen, it seems like the legal machinery to prosecute it already exists.

If we instead imagined autonomous robots going and breaking stuff in the adjacent business' warehouse during a test run, I have to imagine a very different response. That this is happening in an abstract digital world (for now) is part of the problem.

> Can't negligence and recklessness already substitute for direct intent as the mens rea of a crime?

The point that I'm trying to make is that there's an opportunity to reduce this ambiguity. Reducing the ambiguity and aligning incentives is much more likely to prevent bad stuff happening than reacting to a fait accompli model with latent humanicidal tendencies.