‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Who should be held accountable when an AI Agent (accidentally) acts maliciously?

37 points · 99 comments · Greenpants

  1. autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
    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.

    Just because a person should be accountable doesn't mean that the AI company can't also be if their service should never have allowed something to happen in the first place, but we're probably going to want actual regulations around what sort of guardrails they're expected to have.

    1. ButlerianJihad · · focus · HN ↗
      Okay Isaac Asimov: how do you define "use"? If I pay for an autonomous car, and I sit inside it while it drives around with A.I., am I using that A.I?

      If I speak words in a private space, and a clandestine A.I. spontaneously takes action in the real world based solely on words that I spoke, have I used it? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.xkcd.com&#x2F;1807&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.xkcd.com&#x2F;1807&#x2F;

      If a business takes my data, like interaction data or a video of me doing stuff, and processes it by A.I, are they using the A.I, or am I using it because it&#x27;s operating on my input?

      If A.I. agents are in my notebook computer, or they are in a cloud server where I have an account, or they are somehow acting while I have them at the command line, but they spontaneously act whether or not I command them, and they work in the background and they work without prompting, but they can also be commanded by direct user prompts... are we using those agents? Or are the agents using us?

      <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversal" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversa...

      1. TheRoque · · focus · HN ↗
        Doesn&#x27;t seem like hard dilemmas... Would you use the word &quot;use&quot; for hopping on a bus ? Well same for hopping on an autonomous car. Unless you touch the wheel you didn&#x27;t use it. Same for the second example, doesn&#x27;t seem ambiguous as all, the hardest part I guess is proving it that there was no malicious intent, but with logs and all that, doesn&#x27;t seem that hard.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.