Abstract

The title of the paper is an allusion to Philip K. Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which inspired the movie Blade Runner) and aims, at once, to highlight the (possible) relation between Criminal Law and Artificial Intelligence in its two dimensions of criminal protection (hence the reference to ‘electric crimes’) and criminal liability (hence the reference to the androids’ dreams), within the background problem of knowing whether Artificial Intelligence is truly mind. The purpose of this paper is, precisely, to identify whether there is indeed such relation, in those two dimensions, and making use of a mediating concept, the concept of ‘mind (or ‘mentality’). I argue that Artificial Intelligence “specimens” do not have a mind and, therefore, its protection and regulation by Criminal Law is impaired. I conclude by presenting a choice between a total irrelevance model of Artificial Intelligence to Criminal Law and a model in which Artificial Intelligence emerges as object and subject of Criminal Law by analogy with persons.