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

37 points · 99 comments · Greenpants

  1. CatDaaaady · · focus · HN ↗
    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.

    1. JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
      > If I fire a computer program that mistakenly causes another person harm, its my fault

      Legally, this isn’t complete. If it was a genuine mistake and you weren’t reckless, there can be very limited liability.

      The AI makers are rich. They can afford to pay. What they can’t afford is complicated adjudications of damages and fault. A system of safe-harbor best practices that cap liability at a penalizing amount that anyone on the other side would be happy with getting quickly and with minimal legal effort is a precedented path forward. Unfortunately, that involves invoking the “r” word.

      1. Avicebron · · focus · HN ↗
        > you weren’t reckless

        I feel like the debate is going to come down to what is and isn't considered reckless (both developer and user). Which seems... complicated, with our current LLM/agentic systems.

        EDIT: you added more to your comment, the makers have to have some liability. Safe-harbor best practices that cap liability are ripe for abuse.

        1. breadloser · · focus · HN ↗
          Placing any degree of trust in a system known to hallucinate seems inherently reckless. I'm alarmed that this is even up for debate.
          1. blooalien · · focus · HN ↗
            > Placing any degree of trust in a system known to hallucinate seems inherently reckless. I'm alarmed that this is even up for debate.

            The longer this all goes on, and the deeper the vast majority of folks keep choosing to entrench themselves at one extreme or the other (while being completely unwilling to even consider that there might just be a middle-ground closer to actual reality), the more alarmed I become.

            The levels of literal insanity surrounding this technology are how you end up with a real-life "Terminator" scenario, except you're gonna get autonomous killing machines without the time-travel nor any actually intelligent machines. They'll just do their job (killing humans) until we end them, or they end us.

            Thankfully, we're not there yet but we do have the exact sorta utterly dangerous completely clueless clowns running around in "the Halls of Power" making the sorts of decisions which bring that reality closer with each passing day. We're really truly screwed if we don't start putting these people under serious scrutiny.

            1. JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
              How do you think it's solved? The number of things that folks on both sides (and it really does seem to be a two-sided debate, at least in America) are "alarmed...is even up for debate" that are so obviously worthy of reasoned investigation and potentially experiments is annoying and seems to be calcifying onto ersatz partisan stances versus resolving anything usefully.
              1. blooalien · · focus · HN ↗
                I wish I had the slightest clue how to dial down the insanity and approach this whole situation with reason and logic, but the people in charge aren't up for any of that foolishness, and far too high a percentage of everyone else chooses to either 100% believe every word of the crazies in charge as Gospel Truth, or at the other end of the extreme, wanting to outright shut down the technology entirely due to "doomer" fears, and none of them want to listen to a single word from anyone who actually understands how this stuff really even works. It's not freakin' magic FFS! It's math and software. Some of us do know how it works and try desperately to help others understand, but nobody wants to understand. They just want to believe the "machine god" is gonna save them (or kill them). It's just a tool. Whether it does good or bad depends entirely on what we humans choose to do with it and how well we use it (just like any tool).
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