The larger problem with no fault liability are the deluge of unimportant and frivolous lawsuits. Get someone in a court room whose DIY deck collapsed because of wrong advice from the free version of ChatGPT, and a jury will 100% sympathize with the poor guy with a broken leg and “mental suffering” than the trillion dollar company.
If you can win a lawsuit for drinking McDonalds coffee that’s too hot, or for getting injured when trespassing, or being negligent/lazy and getting injured at work, then the millions (billions?) of people using AI every day are going to have thousands of lawsuits per day coming up. Because so long as there’s some plausible route to assigning blame, and a law or legal precedent allowing for that blame, there will be many lawyers ready to pounce. Especially if all the ambulance-chasing lawyers lose their lobbying and self-driving cars become more common.
Think Digital Safe Harbor laws. Without them, a company like Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. basically couldn’t exist. Instead of a DMCA takedown, and a garnishing of ad-revenue from a creator with copyright-infringing content, they would just sue YouTube where there’s about a million times more upside. The nuisance value of the lawsuits alone would make the internet a much worse place.
Of course there is some level of liability that would probably be good, without coming with a million unimportant lawsuits, but without that spelled out, the result will not be positive.
If you can win a lawsuit for drinking McDonalds coffee that’s too hot
If you’re talking about what I think you are, that coffee was 82-88C and was never drunk. The victim lost 20% of her body weight from the resulting injuries.
I don’t think safe harbor works here. Those platforms were platforms: they were neutral mediators between humans, and thus there was always a human at fault. AI companies don’t have a similar blame sink; they’re not mediating between anything, they are in the business of selling minds they manufactured.
One note: Platforms acting as “neutral mediators” is not a requirement for DMCA safe harbor; nor for the famous §230 of the CDA. In both cases, what matters is that the platform is not the author of the infringing content; some other human is. The author, not the platform, can be held liable for infringing content — so long as the platform complies with the law’s other requirements. Neutrality is not one.
AI companies don’t fit that rubric; not because they’re not “neutral mediators”, but rather because the systems they build and host are writing content (and, increasingly, performing other behaviors), rather than hosting content that some human author wrote.
These are great points. I am not an expert in legislation, but there are people who are we can work with on this.
Note in the example you gave a private individual would not be liable, so neither should the AI company.
However you are correct that it’s just as important the legislation makes blindingly clear when AI companies are not liable as when they are, so that we can avoid spurious lawsuits. AI companies may actually be grateful to be regulated here if it gives them greater clarity.
The larger problem with no fault liability are the deluge of unimportant and frivolous lawsuits. Get someone in a court room whose DIY deck collapsed because of wrong advice from the free version of ChatGPT, and a jury will 100% sympathize with the poor guy with a broken leg and “mental suffering” than the trillion dollar company.
If you can win a lawsuit for drinking McDonalds coffee that’s too hot, or for getting injured when trespassing, or being negligent/lazy and getting injured at work, then the millions (billions?) of people using AI every day are going to have thousands of lawsuits per day coming up. Because so long as there’s some plausible route to assigning blame, and a law or legal precedent allowing for that blame, there will be many lawyers ready to pounce. Especially if all the ambulance-chasing lawyers lose their lobbying and self-driving cars become more common.
Think Digital Safe Harbor laws. Without them, a company like Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. basically couldn’t exist. Instead of a DMCA takedown, and a garnishing of ad-revenue from a creator with copyright-infringing content, they would just sue YouTube where there’s about a million times more upside. The nuisance value of the lawsuits alone would make the internet a much worse place.
Of course there is some level of liability that would probably be good, without coming with a million unimportant lawsuits, but without that spelled out, the result will not be positive.
If you’re talking about what I think you are, that coffee was 82-88C and was never drunk. The victim lost 20% of her body weight from the resulting injuries.
I don’t think safe harbor works here. Those platforms were platforms: they were neutral mediators between humans, and thus there was always a human at fault. AI companies don’t have a similar blame sink; they’re not mediating between anything, they are in the business of selling minds they manufactured.
One note: Platforms acting as “neutral mediators” is not a requirement for DMCA safe harbor; nor for the famous §230 of the CDA. In both cases, what matters is that the platform is not the author of the infringing content; some other human is. The author, not the platform, can be held liable for infringing content — so long as the platform complies with the law’s other requirements. Neutrality is not one.
AI companies don’t fit that rubric; not because they’re not “neutral mediators”, but rather because the systems they build and host are writing content (and, increasingly, performing other behaviors), rather than hosting content that some human author wrote.
These are great points. I am not an expert in legislation, but there are people who are we can work with on this.
Note in the example you gave a private individual would not be liable, so neither should the AI company.
However you are correct that it’s just as important the legislation makes blindingly clear when AI companies are not liable as when they are, so that we can avoid spurious lawsuits. AI companies may actually be grateful to be regulated here if it gives them greater clarity.