Comment by slowmovintarget
2 months ago
> ...I would say it decided to do so,
Right, and casual speech is fine, but should not be load-bearing in discussions about policy, legality, or philosophy. A "who's responsible" discussion that's vectoring into all of these areas needs a tighter definition of "decides" which I'm sure you'll agree does not include anything your thermostat makes happen when it follows its program. There's no choice there (philosophy) so the device detecting the trigger conditions and carrying out the designated action isn't deciding, it is a process set in motion by whoever set the thermostat.
I think we're in agreement that someone setting the tool loose bears the responsibility. Until we have a serious way to attribute true agency to these systems, blaming the system is not reasonable.
"Oops, I put a list of email addresses and a random number generator together and it sent an unwanted email to someone who didn't welcome it." It didn't do that, you did.
> Oops, I put a list of email addresses and a random number generator together and it sent an unwanted email to someone who didn't welcome it.
Well no, that’s not what happened at all. It found these emails on its own by searching the internet and extracting them from github commits.
AI agents are not random number generators. They can behave in very open-ended ways and take complex actions to achieve goals. It is difficult to reasonably foresee what they might do in a given situation.