The solution is simple: hold anyone who deploys an agent responsible for its behavior. If it commits 10 counts of felony hacking, ouch. If it kills 10 pedestrians by running a red light, ouch. If this is "human level intelligence", then setting it loose is the same as instructing / coercing a human to do an activity. If I strap a bomb to someone and force them to run into a crowded building (or put them in a scenario…
We aren’t going to do that because intent matters. You need to control your dog and there should be penalties if you don’t, but if your dog bit someone because you didn’t control it properly, that’s not the quite the same as if you bit someone. Another analogy: a zoo is responsible for protecting the public, and should be reponsible if an animal escapes and hurt someone. But a zoo employee wouldn’t have the same kind…
In fact the people pressing the play button are the ones telling us it cannot be controlled, it is a threat to human and national security, and warning us of the impending damages they are about to cause. I'd say we've established motive (profit at the cost of safety).
To abuse your metaphor: if the zoo was genetically modifying animals to give them enhanced abilities to escape and kill, and then putting them into an escape room with a reward for escaping / killing, then they would be liable for doing so if the animal went on to kill. Just the same as a trained fighting dog bite is different than an accidental bite from an otherwise peaceful animal (you turned the dog into this monster, now its your fault).