Comment by socializer
12 hours ago
> 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).