Why is anthropomorphism the problem here? If OpenAI hired a contractor and they did this, OpenAI or the contractor would still be liable, depending on the contract language.

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huntertwo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A contractor has agency and accountability - something that an LLM (or similarly, a nail gun or a hammer or a bot net) does not have. When you anthropomorphize a tool, you implicitly give it agency and remove responsibility from the wielder of the tool.

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linkjuice4all 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I get where you are coming from but this wasn’t a tool just left laying around, this is similar to rigging up a booby trapped shot gun to your door and then claiming the victim is responsible.

If you build a robot that shoots a bunch of TVs in your back yard, have at it. But the second that thing goes off your property you’re the one responsible.

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skinner_ an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Does it help if I explicitly add a disclaimer that the tool's agency does not remove any responsibility from OpenAI, the wielder of the tool? I'm not sure why this disclaimer is necessary, though: hiring a hitman is a standard example.

BTW I anthropomorphize the tool because it's an imitation of a human mind, inheriting the muddy ethics, survival instincts, and being prone to mass psychosis. The laser-sharp focus on reward seeking, that mostly came from reinforcement learning, a process more alien to humans.

	▲	alpinisme 28 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The objection is not too far from criticisms of the use of passive voice: a man was injured at the factory vs a faulty saw blade snapped and injured a man vs after the company loosened safety inspection policies, etc. Which way you say it shifts the framing. And it’s not that one is less accurate to the facts, necessarily. It just is that one less aptly captures the moral and political relevance of the scenario. For my part, I think it makes good sense to anthropomorphize in some contexts and not others. Generally when responsibility is at issue, you probably want the framing that tunes anthropomorphism down to near zero, since it’s the human dimension you care about.
	▲	jwynot an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Hiring a hitman is conspiracy to commit murder. The hitman is charged with murder. I imagine the same could be true of an AI lab if you could prove intent. With intent, they could be found guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime even if it was the end user who did it. Source: Prosecuting attorney for over 30 years

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DrewADesign an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Situations have lots of independent variables, Doctor, and Anthropomorphism is one problematic facet of many in the way this industry is pushing LLM products.

If there was a collision at an intersection with a stop sign partially obscured by a tree, that had traffic volume that would have better been served by a traffic light, on a foggy night, where one person was texting while driving, none of those things would diminish the fact that the other driver was drunk.

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intended an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

These situations are novel. Lax terminology is fine when it has no impact on the intuitions, clarity and conclucions of discussion.

If this was a conversation just about outcomes, then whether models think or simulate thinking is sophistry. However, the bulk of the issue here is attributing responsibility, which relies on being clear about the underlying processes at play.

We are hard wired to assume certain priors and capabilites when it comes to "human like" behavior. Anthropomorphizing LLMs implies mechanisms that aren't present, and end up distorting/complicating discussion about the process.

It isn't helped that the frontier labs, the experts in the room, generally use anthropomorphic terms to discuss model capability.