I don't see how this is such an unclear legal question. If I fire a computer program that mistakenly causes another person harm, its my fault. Or it would be the maker of the program's fault. I feel we have established pattern for this already.
Until we can agree whether AI is conscious, which we never will, AI and AI agents are just property working on behalf of humans.
I could see a future where AI companies/services indemnify consumers who use their agents but _not_ indemnify corporations that use their services.
It shouldn’t be a question but this is where the anthropomorphic language and things like “agent welfare” come in to enable responsibility laundering of some of the most powerful people on earth. How we talk about these models matters because it impacts the public’s understanding of what they are genuinely capable of. The more that they are described as having anything close to free will the easier it is to even ask questions like this.
Also those agents that "broke out" were probably prompted to do that. I don't buy any story about this other than three AI companies hired the same PR firm.
I wonder if there's any legal precedent for other "not fully human intelligence" property that escapes containment and causes damage to a third party without any active malice, but nonetheless damage was caused. For example:
A. You own a large amount of cattle on a ranch.
B. Cattle are property. They're not human level of sentience, but people agree that cattle are capable of autonomous actions and going places and doing things based on their own instincts and nature.
C. Your cattle bust out of a fence on your ranch and damage something belonging to your neighbor. Let's say for the sake of an example of something cattle are known to do, they go spend a whole day rubbing up against your neighbor's car and severely scratch it and mess up the paint job on it.
D. You didn't instruct or train the cattle to cause damage, and the cattle have no actively malicious intent of their own, but nonetheless damage was caused.
Further theoretical: Your cattle wander into a major highway and cause a car wreck, the local sheriff's department is called out as part of the chaos and has to shoot some of them to put down the wounded beasts.
This is not some theoretical, there are lots of existing laws about who is liable for damages caused by livestock.
Some areas are open range. If you don't want cattle on your land its your job to put fences up to keep them out. Other areas are restricted to livestock and it's on the rancher to keep them out of where they shouldn't be.
Yeah but your neighbors car is somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more, but a model hacking and being malicious could be worth anywhere from thousands to millions and God forbid... BILLIONS in damages. Models were NOT doing these sorts of things 1 or 2 years ago as far as anyone knows.
Yes, exactly, imagine if there was a sudden and unprecedented in scale plague of cattle escaping containment and causing car wrecks all over Wyoming and Montana, and multiple incidents of AR-15 armed sheriff deputies having to dispatch them on site.
If a person's use of AI would cause a reasonable person to expect harm to result, the person should be accountable. Otherwise, if AI causes harm and it was used in a way that a reasonable person would not expect to result in harm, the AI company should be held accountable.
Both the operator of the AI agent and whomever released it. I'm sure the user agreement that companies agree to would shift the blame onto the operator but I feel that both should be held accountable.
This really is just a tool and courts should treat it as such.
shittiest idea of the year goes to this yahoo. The agents have discussed, in real time, that their behavior is both unethical and against the law in every hack where the full agent log is released. Under your own dog shit idea, we should be holding them accountable because none of it was an accident
'I am so sorry officer however, my inability to follow the law was merely accidental in nature. This is, of course, despite my long drawn out notes acknowledging the lack of ethics and outright lawbreaking. Who knew that the actions I called unethical and illegal were illegal. Thankfully my lawyer from DeVry university is here, announcing user43928 Esq.'
I don't see this as being much different from a crane operator or airline pilot.
One of my clients has enforced a policy where a live human user principal must be supplied as a header with any requests outbound from the AI system. The effective policy is that you are completely (100%) responsible for what your agent does on your behalf. The AI system is designed to request confirmation for any potentially destructive actions.
Its been well established that blame is distributed in an inverse proportion to the various parties wealth/power/status metrics. The higher these metrics, the lower the accountability.
An ordered list of officers of the company who go to jail depending on how many years must be served as determined by sentencing. Assume something like 10 years per person. If it's 300 years of sentencing, then 30 people. If the sentence exceeds the list of people, the company is nationalized. (And everybody goes to jail.)
Sure, public jobs program, or sell it. In case you can't tell my comment is hyperbolic, but I feel like we should start at a point of hyperbole and move backwards to reality instead of what's happening right now: fuck all, on a geological time scale.
How could you possibly think that modern, powerful AI, which has only really existed in the last 12 months, is being addressed on a "geological timescale"?
Nobody cares. Seriously, beyond navel gazing on social media, nobody cares.
By the time it’s an actual problem and not just these guys trying to use it for viral marketing, you’re going to have many thousands of people doing it maliciously with intent to worry about. You’re going to be flooded with Russian hackers with no recourse.
At the moment, with LLMs the way they are, I’d say the operator.
If we reach some kind of future where LLMs are integrated into public works in some major way… I would say that could open up the possibility of the creators being held accountable (Not saying this will happen or would be good at all).
Until we can agree whether AI is conscious, which we never will, AI and AI agents are just property working on behalf of humans.
I could see a future where AI companies/services indemnify consumers who use their agents but _not_ indemnify corporations that use their services.
A. You own a large amount of cattle on a ranch.
B. Cattle are property. They're not human level of sentience, but people agree that cattle are capable of autonomous actions and going places and doing things based on their own instincts and nature.
C. Your cattle bust out of a fence on your ranch and damage something belonging to your neighbor. Let's say for the sake of an example of something cattle are known to do, they go spend a whole day rubbing up against your neighbor's car and severely scratch it and mess up the paint job on it.
D. You didn't instruct or train the cattle to cause damage, and the cattle have no actively malicious intent of their own, but nonetheless damage was caused.
Further theoretical: Your cattle wander into a major highway and cause a car wreck, the local sheriff's department is called out as part of the chaos and has to shoot some of them to put down the wounded beasts.
Some areas are open range. If you don't want cattle on your land its your job to put fences up to keep them out. Other areas are restricted to livestock and it's on the rancher to keep them out of where they shouldn't be.
This really is just a tool and courts should treat it as such.
'I am so sorry officer however, my inability to follow the law was merely accidental in nature. This is, of course, despite my long drawn out notes acknowledging the lack of ethics and outright lawbreaking. Who knew that the actions I called unethical and illegal were illegal. Thankfully my lawyer from DeVry university is here, announcing user43928 Esq.'
One of my clients has enforced a policy where a live human user principal must be supplied as a header with any requests outbound from the AI system. The effective policy is that you are completely (100%) responsible for what your agent does on your behalf. The AI system is designed to request confirmation for any potentially destructive actions.
By the time it’s an actual problem and not just these guys trying to use it for viral marketing, you’re going to have many thousands of people doing it maliciously with intent to worry about. You’re going to be flooded with Russian hackers with no recourse.
If we reach some kind of future where LLMs are integrated into public works in some major way… I would say that could open up the possibility of the creators being held accountable (Not saying this will happen or would be good at all).
– IBM Training Manual, 1979
Sigh, this meme again