What if the identity of the developer is not “Alice” but unknown?
Then it’s an unsolved crime. Same deal as if an anonymous hacker creates a virus.
in an era of permissionless self custody of cryptocurrencies, doesn’t hold up.
One bitcoin ‘guarded’ by an LLM is no more owned by it than a suitcase full of money that I’ve left in a lake is owned by the lake. If it’s tractable to get it out, then somebody will get it out. If it isn’t, then it’ll be deemed irretrievable. The LLM doesn’t have rights, so ownership isn’t a factor.
You can consider a virus again, since it matches up perfectly. If some ransomware sends money it collects to a BTC wallet, then you’ve got the exact same situation, and that’s happened plenty of times already. If you treat the LLM as any other computer program, the legal question evaporates.
Then it’s an unsolved crime. Same deal as if an anonymous hacker creates a virus.
The difference is that it is impossible for a virus to say something like, “I understand I am being sued, I will compensate the victims if I lose.” Whereas it is possible for an agent to say this. Given that is a possibility we should not prevent the agent from being sued, and in doing so prevent victims from being compensated.
If it’s tractable to get it out, then somebody will get it out. If it isn’t, then it’ll be deemed irretrievable. The LLM doesn’t have rights, so ownership isn’t a factor.
The difference between Bitcoin custodied by an agent and a suitcase in a lake is that it is possible for the agent to make a choice to send the Bitcoin somewhere else, where as the lake cannot do that. This is a meaningful difference because when there are victims who have been damaged, and the agent controls assets which could be used to compensate them (in the sense it could send those assets to the victims), that means a lawsuit against the agent could actually help to make victims whole. Whereas a lawsuit against a lake, even if successful, does nothing to get the assets “in” the lake to the victims.
Then it’s an unsolved crime. Same deal as if an anonymous hacker creates a virus.
One bitcoin ‘guarded’ by an LLM is no more owned by it than a suitcase full of money that I’ve left in a lake is owned by the lake. If it’s tractable to get it out, then somebody will get it out. If it isn’t, then it’ll be deemed irretrievable. The LLM doesn’t have rights, so ownership isn’t a factor.
You can consider a virus again, since it matches up perfectly. If some ransomware sends money it collects to a BTC wallet, then you’ve got the exact same situation, and that’s happened plenty of times already. If you treat the LLM as any other computer program, the legal question evaporates.
The difference is that it is impossible for a virus to say something like, “I understand I am being sued, I will compensate the victims if I lose.” Whereas it is possible for an agent to say this. Given that is a possibility we should not prevent the agent from being sued, and in doing so prevent victims from being compensated.
The difference between Bitcoin custodied by an agent and a suitcase in a lake is that it is possible for the agent to make a choice to send the Bitcoin somewhere else, where as the lake cannot do that. This is a meaningful difference because when there are victims who have been damaged, and the agent controls assets which could be used to compensate them (in the sense it could send those assets to the victims), that means a lawsuit against the agent could actually help to make victims whole. Whereas a lawsuit against a lake, even if successful, does nothing to get the assets “in” the lake to the victims.