Comment by tgv
3 hours ago
And perhaps the people who built and deployed the autocomplete and the connection as well.
Because --if you'll bear with me-- it may of course be much more involved: when (not if) AI models enter life-sustaining systems, such as hospitals, nuclear devices, or food logistics, one of them may get the others to sabotage something resulting in accidents, ranging from mild inconvenience to mass murder.
The person who connected the spicy autocomplete to the defibrillator, or the green house climate control, or the emergency button, is then not the one responsible. Responsibility lies elsewhere, and is nebulous. Think of the Boeing MAX scandal. Did anyone get punished?
That's why it's important to resist it now. Soon, the responsibility of which you speak is gone, and nobody will feel burdened when making decisions with unforeseeable consequences.
> And perhaps the people who built and deployed the autocomplete and the connection as well.
I disagree. IMO it's the person who connects the LLM to the button who bears the responsibility of the workings of the resulting contraption.
Shareholder meeting to CEO: you must connect the button.
CEO to CIO: you must connect the button.
CIO to VP AI: you must connect the button.
VP AI to team lead AI integration: you must connect the button.
Team lead AI integration to senior: you must connect the button.
Senior to medior: you must connect the button.
Medior to junior: Hey, Olmo. That button they were talking about. You know?
Olmo: Yeah.
Medior: You have to hook it up to the LLM output.
Olmo: Why?
Medior: The boss says so.
Olmo: Ok.
Shrugs and deploys.
I used to hear things like “if cigarettes/alcohol were invented now, they would never allow it”, indicating that consumer protection used to be a thing, as early as 10-20 years ago. Now when AI hit the market it was obvious how bad and dangerous it was, yet governments (even the supposedly good ones in Europe which still [pretend to] do consumer protection) did nothing to protect their citizens from the harms AI was causing.
If we still did (or ever did) consumer protection like that cigarette/alcohol myth above indicates, then the makers of that tool would indeed be responsible for when their products does dangerous things.
100 years of science fiction clearly shows that unforeseeable consequences are not that unforeseen.