Comment by sfink
12 hours ago
Since this seems to get lost, I'd just like to point out: if you ask your agent to do something like this (or pretty much anytime you give it internet access and say "do whatever it takes"), you are responsible for what it does. Even if you couldn't have predicted the lengths to which it would go.
> Even if you couldn't have predicted the lengths to which it would go.
Not obviously? In the US, there are some crimes of strict liability (you're guilty if it happened), but most require intent or at least the ability to foresee consequences (i.e., it must be shown that you neglected to take due care).
For example, you're generally not liable for freak accidents, like if a tire comes off your vehicle and kills a pedestrian, even though you're the one who set the vehicle in motion and therefore are the one most directly responsible for creating the circumstances that led to the outcome. Now, if you knew the tire had issues and you secured it with zip ties, that's another story.
I think this will get litigated to figure out where "you could not have seen this coming" ends and negligence or deliberate malice starts, but it's not black and white right now. Normally, I would say you don't want to be patient zero, but with the attitudes shown by frontier labs, I guess YOLO is the way.
> most require intent or the ability to foresee consequences (i.e., it must be shown that you neglected to take due care).
This behaviour is neglectful
Very broad brush when I could come up with piles of counterexamples and rules that would force a court to inspect every detail closely.
> Now, if you knew the tire had issues and you secured it with zip ties, that's another story.
Securing your tires with zip ties and telling an AI to go off and do whatever it takes to achieve its task without knowing or caring what it’ll do are the same: negligent. It needs to be socially and colloquially unacceptable to do this.
Most crimes require intent. Some do not, but without intent, still tend to be lesser crimes. For example, killing someone through negligence (the zip tie example) is still a crime, but manslaughter, and not murder.
Digital trespass, intent is generally required, but the definition of "intent" varies by circuit in rather interesting ways. I don't think OpenAI could be prosecuted criminally under current US laws due to those wrinkles (which is a problem with current US laws).
If the user has a special remote that, when pressed in a certain way, is capable of triggering a nuclear bomb, and if the user has no idea what clicking the buttons on that remote does (they are, after all, just trying to change channels), you’re telling me that the user is responsible for detonating that bomb, and not the company who build the remote (and did not provide detailed instructions on how that remote works, or configure the remote to Not detonate a bomb)?
IANAL but it seems to me that:
i) it would not be weird to be tried for manslaughter;
ii) it would not be weird to be found innocent/for the case to be dismissed.
Generally people prefer not to experience (i) even if they can expect (ii).
In America, prosecutors will not bring charges unless they're certain they can convict or browbeat you into a plea deal. Unless you have money for a good lawyer (the spending of which is a punishment itself), you will likely face some sort of punishment.
>i) it would not be weird to be tried for manslaughter;
What's the point of prosecution in this case, assuming the circumstances were known in advance? Is it just "police/prosecutors are pigs and are out to oppress people at every opportunity"?
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Usually, any functioning government that wants their country to keep existing would never let normal people anywhere close to such a remote. You wouldn't want your nuclear power plant to be accessible like a music festival either. But governments are slow and people were also allowed to freely buy and own uranium as late as the 1970s.
Hence many people are using this as an example of AI now.
It wasn't generally dangerous, but we've starting refining AI enough that if you pile enough in one model you get an emergent fissile reaction out of it and it starts to become a really big danger.
The hard part is to figure out where the danger is and where to cut it off. The information freedom people are never going to agree that information could be dangerous for example and will fight you all the way down.
At the same time people are going to get real fucking tired of clumps of information hacking their bank accounts and stealing their money and want to do something about it.
It is a thought experiment, not a real scenario
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What if I specifically tell it to not do anything nefarious or illegal? If it does it on its own (because it’s marketed that way) then how could I be held liable?
Or even if I didn’t tell it to not do anything illegal and it does, how is that responsibility on me if the ask was something bland?
>What if I specifically tell it to not do anything nefarious or illegal?
Typically the avenue for lawsuits would be under "negligence" or "recklessness", so it'd be up to a judge/jury to decide what a reasonable level of care is. "specifically tell it to not do anything nefarious or illegal" isn't an airtight defense though. If you told your tesla FSD car to drive itself and not break any laws, but then it crashed into something, you'd still be liable.
>(because it’s marketed that way) then how could I be held liable?
then it becomes a product liability lawsuit where they sue you, and you sue the AI company.
> What if I specifically tell it to not do anything nefarious or illegal?
Sure, but a reasonable user would expect that condition to be implicit in using a commercial model.
It’s what the safety/alignment discussion is about: how we can get models to actually comply with laws & ethics.
But the same problem exists in the real world. If you tell someone to “Try everything possible to get it done, I don’t care what it takes”, I’d imagine that people would be far more likely to bend/break rules than if you said “could you please help me with… ?”
Do agents know exactly what jurisdiction I am in and which national, state, and local laws apply to me?
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> Sure, but a reasonable user would expect that condition to be implicit in using a commercial model.
In fact, adding it might make things worse as it shows at least some awareness of the risks.
In theory sure. But has this been included either in a court of law or the court of public opinion? Otherwise, this is "just like your opinion man".
Are you a multi-trillion dollar company that the government considers a vital national security interest for the forseeable future?
No?
Then yes, you can be held responsible and it's not even a subtle question in the law. There's no one else around who is going to be held responsible. Certainly not the aforementioned vital national security interest.
> Then yes, you can be held responsible and it's not even a subtle question in the law.
Source?
Looking at how the LLM companies are acting and being treated, an average user could certainly be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
A critical element that gets missed is civil vs criminal liability. You might not be thrown in jail if your agent went rogue, but if it runs amok and causes a bunch of damages (eg. filing a bunch of spurious lawsuits) you'll still be on the hook for monetary damages.
Ah yes, the court can sue me for a trillion dollars after I smoke the entire US economy with a sovereign AI. Too bad about all the people that suicided after they lost everything they had.
Sometimes we keep dangerous things out of people's hands because the consequences are larger than any one persons responsibility can hold.
> you are responsible for what it does.
Unless, of course, you are a frontier lab itself. Then you can’t possibly be held responsible.
> "do whatever it takes"
Yes, if they are trained on US presidents this literally means "you have permission to blow up Nord Stream".
…but that ended up being Ukraine
Nothing described here seems illegal as opposed to merely annoying? I guess on some level “everything is wire fraud” but that was the case even without AI.
> if you ask your agent to do something like this (or pretty much anytime you give it internet access and say "do whatever it takes"), you are responsible for what it does.
Clearly not, given that the frontier labs have gotten away with unathorized access to a bunch of sites including some from the Pentagon.