Who should be held accountable when an AI Agent (accidentally) acts maliciously?

It looks like public perception of how 'intelligent' current AI models are varies widely. Back in 2022, a Google employee already thought their AI model was sentient . Today in 2026, it seems like every other week there's a new article released about how AI companies "can't hold back their AI agents anymore" [ 2 , 3 , 4 ] .

It makes perfect sense for the general public to start fearing AI. In the past, people feared companies would use AI to replace all kinds of jobs, and now they are even hacking government organisations .