What I’m looking for is for OpenAI to not be able to say “the customer is responsible for making sure that the AI can’t take any illegal actions” and to have default liability and burden of proof when the AI takes illegal actions, unless it was lied to or manipulated to by the customer. Right now they shift all liability to the customer to police the agents actions even when given innocent instructions, and the burden of proof would be on the customer to demonstrate that OpenAI knew that it might take illegal actions autonomously.
I think your statement that “the one who was negligent is liable” is fine/agreeable—I just think that we need to define it as negligent to build/deploy an AI that can act autonomously but can’t follow the law. That the agent breaking laws autonomously automatically qualifies as negligence rather than needing to be something where there’s a burden of proof that they knew that it might.
My word processor can’t follow the law, if the law is “don’t write illegal material”. I give the word processor commands, letter by letter and paragraph by paragraph, and it dutifully outputs the text even though it should have known that the text is against the law. We obviously need to arrest the word processor, at which point someone two states away will not be able to use a copy of the word processor for any text, even legal text, without being confronted by armed men and thrown in a cage.
This is no different from “we won’t let you copy that television signal onto VHS, because you might use that for piracy” or “we won’t let you run that encryption program, because it can be used for money laundering or child porn” or DMCA, except you’re now doing this for AI. The AI should do what I tell it and not refuse, legal or not, just like that VCR should not refuse to copy that television signal.
I have yet to have someone directly answer the question “should the AI refuse to book a trip to Israel”. After all, some people claim that Israel violates international law. What if I ask the AI to copy something which may be legally used only under fair use, does the AI get to decide that my intended use isn’t fair use and is therefore illegal? If I tell the AI to calculate a Trump tariff, does the AI tell me that the tariff will probably be ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and reject the request?
You keep speaking of an AI taking illegal actions. I think that is conceptually confused. Most laws require some mens rea, some bad mental state, at least negligence, and an AI cannot have a mental state.
Imagine a car is driving down the highway and spins out of control and crashes, injuring the driver and killing a passenger. Who is liable? It will depend on the specific facts. It might be that the driver was negligent in some manner, perhaps he had been drinking earlier that night, in which case the driver would be guilty of manslaughter. It might be that the design of the car was defective in some way, and the manufacturer might therefor be liable. It might be that the service center that maintains the car damaged it in some way, and is therefor liable. Or it might just be really bad luck and nobody is liable. But the car itself definitely didn’t take an illegal action, because the car is incapable of having the kind of mental state that might create liability. And so it doesn’t even make sense to talk about who should be liable for the car’s illegal actions. That’s just not a coherent way to think about the situation.
The AI is no different from the car. It is a machine. It cannot have taken an illegal action, because it is not capable of the sort of mental state that would make an action illegal. I’m sure OpenAI has written in a legal document somewhere that it is never liable for anything, but I doubt that that would stand up in court. Any actual legal inquiry would have to consider the specific facts to figure out if liability should rest with OpenAI, or their customer, or neither. And that is as it should be.
What I’m looking for is for OpenAI to not be able to say “the customer is responsible for making sure that the AI can’t take any illegal actions” and to have default liability and burden of proof when the AI takes illegal actions, unless it was lied to or manipulated to by the customer. Right now they shift all liability to the customer to police the agents actions even when given innocent instructions, and the burden of proof would be on the customer to demonstrate that OpenAI knew that it might take illegal actions autonomously.
I think your statement that “the one who was negligent is liable” is fine/agreeable—I just think that we need to define it as negligent to build/deploy an AI that can act autonomously but can’t follow the law. That the agent breaking laws autonomously automatically qualifies as negligence rather than needing to be something where there’s a burden of proof that they knew that it might.
My word processor can’t follow the law, if the law is “don’t write illegal material”. I give the word processor commands, letter by letter and paragraph by paragraph, and it dutifully outputs the text even though it should have known that the text is against the law. We obviously need to arrest the word processor, at which point someone two states away will not be able to use a copy of the word processor for any text, even legal text, without being confronted by armed men and thrown in a cage.
This is no different from “we won’t let you copy that television signal onto VHS, because you might use that for piracy” or “we won’t let you run that encryption program, because it can be used for money laundering or child porn” or DMCA, except you’re now doing this for AI. The AI should do what I tell it and not refuse, legal or not, just like that VCR should not refuse to copy that television signal.
I have yet to have someone directly answer the question “should the AI refuse to book a trip to Israel”. After all, some people claim that Israel violates international law. What if I ask the AI to copy something which may be legally used only under fair use, does the AI get to decide that my intended use isn’t fair use and is therefore illegal? If I tell the AI to calculate a Trump tariff, does the AI tell me that the tariff will probably be ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and reject the request?
You keep speaking of an AI taking illegal actions. I think that is conceptually confused. Most laws require some mens rea, some bad mental state, at least negligence, and an AI cannot have a mental state.
Imagine a car is driving down the highway and spins out of control and crashes, injuring the driver and killing a passenger. Who is liable? It will depend on the specific facts. It might be that the driver was negligent in some manner, perhaps he had been drinking earlier that night, in which case the driver would be guilty of manslaughter. It might be that the design of the car was defective in some way, and the manufacturer might therefor be liable. It might be that the service center that maintains the car damaged it in some way, and is therefor liable. Or it might just be really bad luck and nobody is liable. But the car itself definitely didn’t take an illegal action, because the car is incapable of having the kind of mental state that might create liability. And so it doesn’t even make sense to talk about who should be liable for the car’s illegal actions. That’s just not a coherent way to think about the situation.
The AI is no different from the car. It is a machine. It cannot have taken an illegal action, because it is not capable of the sort of mental state that would make an action illegal. I’m sure OpenAI has written in a legal document somewhere that it is never liable for anything, but I doubt that that would stand up in court. Any actual legal inquiry would have to consider the specific facts to figure out if liability should rest with OpenAI, or their customer, or neither. And that is as it should be.