No one. It’s a giant “plausible deniability” cluster-fuck.
It’s ‘blaming the dog for farting’ writ large and in the service of billionaires.
The people who use it to do things, obviously. Just like how cameras aren’t responsible for the photos that are taken with them, photoshop isn’t responsible for the images made with it, and knives aren’t responsible for the things that they cut, AI isn’t responsible for the stuff it outputs - the person controlling it is.
AI isn’t responsible for the stuff it outputs - the person controlling it is.
Ultimately, you’re right (as they can decide to use AI or not). But these AI Companies need to shoulder the blame for creating, promoting, and selling AI, which (in its current form) is effectively a “broken tool”.
Good computer hygiene says I should lock my computer while I’m away. Yet, I’m suppose to blindly install an AI agent on my machine and ask it nicely to focus on the task at hand and not use any of the other applications or credentials that might also be installed?!?! It’s ridiculous.
If someone sells you a knife that routinely fires bullets, then the company may have some complicity as with any misrepresented product.
Question is: Who is the person controlling the AI?
The one that allowed the agent to do stuff on its own?
The one that wrote the sandbox, that didn’t work?
The one that wrote the user prompt?
The one that wrote the system prompt?
The one that provides the tools to the AI agent to do stuff?
The one that hosts the model?
The one that fine-tuned or post trained the model?
The one that pretrained the model?
The people that provided the input data to the model?
You can be sure the providers will make sure they’re not legally responsible and that the system prompt has been reviewed by the Legal Dept. So it’s you, the user.
Usually sure, but as we see with drive assistants, getting more and more advanced, and potentially resist the control of the driver, then the manufacturer could become liable.
Except, AI and AI companies will try to convince you that it is right and legal. So I argue that there is also the fault of AI and AI companies as it in intended to be used that way.
The assumption is that the user is supposed to know better but if the user is gullible then wouldn’t some of the fault be with AI and company for taking advantage?
If you don’t leash your dog and it attacks your neighbors then are you and the dog not at fault?
“the person controlling” becomes a bit murky as the person who provides the platform may be judged as controlling it, the user may be controlling it. The courts could be busy.
I see a lot of oversimplifying analogies in the comments, but in my opinion none of them take into account that users of AI don’t know how it works or its risks, and some AI like Grok offers inherently problematic and potentially harmful/illegal functionality
People don’t really know how their cars work either, but they are still responsible for crimes they commit with them.
Well, except for running over cyclists. They are allowed to do that.
We also train people how to use cars. Not as well as we should, but you do have to pass a test to use it. But there are many, many regulations for cars.
We cannot train people how to use generative AI in the same manner. Not least because there is no magic method of using it, but every single training I have been to has said, in no uncertain terms, that the AI can and will lie to you, so don’t trust anything it says. Usually directly after it has failed to do as asked.
We do not gate AI. Anyone can use it, and it is, frankly, devastatingly addictive to many people. It has killed people. It is environmentally destructive.
So, I do blame the AI companies that run the software for mistakes because they don’t fucking care. They just want money.
The difference is that there are people who train very specifically to know exactly how the inside of the car works, and they’re legally liable for the state of how said car works after they work on it.
If your engine blows up after a service, you blame the mechanic, if it blows up after you bought it bew you blame the manufacturer.
If your slop bot goes rogue and starts giving your personal details out to people it shouldn’t when all you did is ask it to make a picture of a cat in a stetson, or in the case of grok, generates csam as part of its regular functions, what else do you do but blame the company that created it?
This is a novel situation with no precedent.
It’s slightly similar to the autonomous vehicles conundrum, but quite different on closer inspection. The driver can theoretically take control of the car and stop in an emergency, so if they fail to do that, then it’s their fault. Not so with an A.I.
At any moment, the A I. could malfunction, and decide to commit crimes, as part of it’s deduced plan of action. The human may not even be aware this is happening. Even if it’s generally agreed that an A.I. cannot have wants, motives, desires, conscience, consciousness, etc; at the end of the day, it can make it’s own independent decisions without any of those. Which I think makes it even more dangerous. Like a monkey with a typewriter but one of the keys says “launch nuke”.
You can’t really fault anyone involved, and it’s a big problem. The human operator did nothing wrong. The developer may have made a mistake, but in my experience A.I. is simply prone to error. The A.I. itself can’t be sent to jail or fined, it didn’t even have any possessions in the first place. It’s a very strange situation.
Of course, the law often doesn’t really care about who’s “at fault”, it cares about “who is responsible”. My guess is that it will become the operator’s fault, simply because it’s too confusing and otherwise people will abuse this loophole.
Personally, I think giving an A.I. agent access to the internet in the first place is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
“The law is clear, says Prof Jeannie Paterson. “If I deploy an AI agent and it causes harm to someone else, I am responsible for that harm.”
In case you were wondering if it wasn’t the bleeding obvious.
If that were true Musk would have to answer for a lot of CP
The agents are the user end of things. It’s not saying the AI companies are responsible, it’s saying whoever used the AI it responsible.
The big companies have too much money to be held responsible for crimes.
maybe if the president of the USA weren’t a raging child rapist…
Even then nothing would happen because modern day capitalists are like kings and kings don’t get held accountable.
Only princes do, and only when they’re super old and have ruined countless lives. After that, they’re sentenced to being treated as royalty while being addressed like a normal: a fate worse than death!
That was most likely true even before “AI”!
He is rich tho.
A human did this a human should be held responsible. “If you throw a ball in the air are you not responsible for where it lands”
Let’s say that ball is a hand grenade. Who gave it to you? It can’t be JUST the user if it’s that dangerous. Finally parents are being held to account if a kid uses a firearm inappropriately. The same should apply to companies who build AI, if it’s used to hack someone or make CSAM.
The same should apply to companies who build AI, if it’s used to hack someone or make CSAM.
Only if they host the model, if it’s a self hosted open source model, the entity hosting the model should be held accountable
Also to keep your analogy going, if I tell you how to make a grenade. You then go out to buy supplies, make the grenade and blow up your neighbour, should I be held accountable for sharing knowledgea? Because I’m yet to hear about anyone getting into trouble for distributing the anarchist’s cookbook
First paragraph: agreed.
Second paragraph: that’s a good question and I really don’t know how to answer that. I guess it would depend on whether or not you knew what I planned to do with it. Because there are laws about that. Do I plan to set it off in my empty field? Or do you know for sure it’s going through a neighbors window? Because if you knew, then told me then you would be in trouble, for accessory at least.
The difference is that a hand grenade is illegal to own. A series of matrix multiplications is not.
A better comparison is a knife. If you throw that in the air and it lands on someone you are responsible, the person who sold you a potentially dangerous but legal tool is not.
Edit illegal, not legal. silly mistake
Where do you live that hand grenades are legal to own?
Was supposed to say illegal, the argument didnt work with saying legal.
Ok, but if time and time again, it proves that this does more harm than good, much like firearms, shouldn’t the person/company that made it be held to account as well as the operator? I’m not saying that it IS the case, but it should be.
AI agents have no agency of their own; their operators are the ones with that control. Negligence in giving an AI agent access to the internet does not absolve the operator of liability.
But it’s called an “agent”! Of course it has agency!
That sounds like something a smoothed brain idiot has or will say…could also be a line out of the movie idiocracy 🤣
Look, the individual - one, single, unshielded human mind - constantly bombarded with the cumulative brainwashing tools built of hundreds of years of psychological research, ads and manipulative propaganda being ceaselessly fed to them by organizations with bottomless wallets, and perverse lifestyle incentives driven by law, monopolistic market manipulation, and tax codes, is obviously completely to blame for every decision they make and should bear the full brunt of all responsibility.
/s
You rolled a bowling ball down a hill. It struck a few cars on the way and went through a house and killed their pet. Guess who would be held responsible? You or the bowling ball manufacturer?
What if the bowling ball was really shiny and worth $100B? Should it make a difference?
What if you bowl your ball normally down the lane and of its own initiative it goes and hacks a website?
In that case, society’s to blame.
Really? I’m inclined to blame that on the manufacturer. If ‘AI’ guardrails fail that spectacularly, it’s on the provider. I fail to see any way to blame society, other than perhaps not voting in more sanity, but that’s pretty indirect.
Sigh. I really need to put /s around things.
It’s a Monty Python quote.
Fair cop, probably should have got it. But rather out of context here without ascribing it.
How do you guardrail the machine that is programmed to literally make things up and/or tell you you’re doing a great job while it does it?
IMO you likely can’t, certainly hasn’t even gotten close yet. Bodes badly for alignment of anything more general. Kind of makes it irresponsible to advocate (and sell) using it on anything important, no?
It’s 100% irresponsible. Especially given how many of then are going rogue.
As the person who deployed the agent, you are responsible for what it does on your behalf. You stand to gain from its actions, you also stand to lose from its bad behavior.
Of course, if the company that provided you the agent knowingly misrepresented the product, you can seek damages for what the agent did - but that’s up to you (and good luck getting damages from trillion-dollar tech companies and their armies of lawyers).
If I make a gun that actively chooses to kill people, I didn’t build a gun and that whole argument falls apart. I’d hold everyone from the CEO to the janitor accountable.
If you make a gun… you didn’t make it? o_O
That’s not a gun. That’s an autonomous killing device. The only gun that ever killed people of its own free will was the STEN gun. If you make something that kills without human intent, that’s not a gun anymore.
You’re still liable as the owner of the gun. You can sue the builder of the gun in turn of course so they go to jail too.
Should Apple be held responsible for someone making CSAM on their phones?
Should Toyota be held responsible if one of their cars is used to drink and drive?
Should a gun company be held liable if somebody decides to shoot themself in the face?
If Apple made a phone that could move around and take pictures of things, and the user asked it to take a picture of the trees outside, and it went to the trees outside and took peeping Tom photos of their neighbor, does the fact that the user asked it to take a picture of some kind make them responsible for whatever irrational and vaguely related thing it does based on the way Apple made the phone?
Should Toyota be held responsible if they make a car where turning the wheel left makes the car turn left 99.99% of the time, and the remaining 0.01% it locks the accelerator, and steers towards the nearest orphan? They put a sticker on the dashboard to warn that sometimes it does that, and you need to be alert to turn off the engine, just in case. They also sell a version with no windows and no driver’s seat.
If a gun explodes in someone’s hands, and injures them, is the manufacturer responsible?
False equivalencies are trite.
And yes, gun companies make weapons of destruction.
