Yet another Hacker News

FTC chair suggests AI developers should be liable for conduct of agents

13 points usernomdeguerre 1 hour ago 4 comments

Avicebron 1 hour ago | parent

I mean there aren't many good options are there, AI can't be held accountable and face meaningful consequences for it's actions. Therefore, where consequences are appropriate, who is ultimately responsible for "their actions?"

m4rtink 35 minutes ago | parent

Both those who developped it & those controlling it - simple as that.

missingcolours 22 minutes ago | parent

Imagine that AI is just another tool. Imagine it's a weed whacker. Who is liable if a weed whacker destroys property?

Well, it depends. If I'm using it according to the instructions and the tool does something it's not supposed to, the manufacturer is liable. If I take a weed whacker and start cutting fiber lines with it, I'm liable.

So in accordance with standard liability practice, AI labs ought to be liable for unintended actions their products take, and the user for illegal actions they direct the product to take.

The slight caveat is that a model just produces text. It can't hack anything on its own. I would say that the product in this scenario would be the harness/agent - if you build a system that takes untrusted input (LLM output) and takes potentially dangerous action based on it, well, that sounds dangerous? Possibly negligent?

etchalon 18 minutes ago | parent

Yes. Duh.