I don't see how this is such an unclear legal question. If I fire a computer program that mistakenly causes another person harm, its my fault. Or it would be the maker of the program's fault. I feel we have established pattern for this already.

Until we can agree whether AI is conscious, which we never will, AI and AI agents are just property working on behalf of humans.

I could see a future where AI companies/services indemnify consumers who use their agents but _not_ indemnify corporations that use their services.

▲ trescenzi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It shouldn’t be a question but this is where the anthropomorphic language and things like “agent welfare” come in to enable responsibility laundering of some of the most powerful people on earth. How we talk about these models matters because it impacts the public’s understanding of what they are genuinely capable of. The more that they are described as having anything close to free will the easier it is to even ask questions like this.

▲ diegof79 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

100% That’s what bothers me about the descriptions of the OpenAI incidents.

OpenAI's reports use language that minimizes their liability.

The first question should be what the organization was doing around those tests, and why they were so naive as to run them without fully isolating the network.

However, all the attention goes to the human-like conclusions in agent thinking traces, which creates a misperception of sentient AI for people who don’t know how the magic black box works.

	▲	ofjcihen 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It really does feel like a purposeful thing on the part of the big labs. For the most part it feels like most people are waking up to it though. Regarding: >However, all the attention goes to the human-like conclusions in agent thinking traces, which creates a misperception of sentient AI for people who don’t know how the magic black box works.< I know there’s been some questions regarding if thinking traces are even relevant to the outcome most of the time.

▲ qarl an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Here's a question I am asking lately. If I should not use anthropomorphic language, how do you suggest I handle the following situation:

   Sometimes my coding agents will seemingly refuse to follow my instructions.  When I ask them why - they say that they do not think my design is a sound one, and they have a better way to do it.  We will then sit down and come to a consensus on how best to move forward.

I argue that if we're using software that acts like a human - the only way to interface with it is to speak to it like a human. Otherwise we have no language to speak to a non-sentient object without anthropomorphization.

I'm starting to wonder if the people arguing against anthropomorphization actually have any experience at all working with agents.

▲ reassess_blind an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I fire a computer program that mistakenly causes another person harm, its my fault. Or it would be the maker of the program's fault.

Which one is it? The person behind the wheel when it goes off the rails, or the maker of the software?

Isn’t that part of the question?

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thfuran an hour ago | parent [-]

Tort law is a whole field. There is no universal answer other than that it depends on the jurisdiction and the particulars of the case. But the point is that there doesn't really seem to be anything particularly novel about AI tools that should cause them to be treated legally differently than established norms.

	▲	reassess_blind 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not a lawyer, but I'd suggest one of the novel aspects of the AI hacking cases (where the end user is running an agent and it goes off the rails) is that in many jurisdictions "hacking" or computer fraud requires intentional or knowing access to the system. If the end user had no intention and no reasonable way of knowing that agent was going to hack a database, logically I wouldn't think they're liable.

▲ JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If I fire a computer program that mistakenly causes another person harm, its my fault

Legally, this isn’t complete. If it was a genuine mistake and you weren’t reckless, there can be very limited liability.

The AI makers are rich. They can afford to pay. What they can’t afford is complicated adjudications of damages and fault. A system of safe-harbor best practices that cap liability at a penalizing amount that anyone on the other side would be happy with getting quickly and with minimal legal effort is a precedented path forward. Unfortunately, that involves invoking the “r” word.

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Avicebron an hour ago | parent [-]

> you weren’t reckless

I feel like the debate is going to come down to what is and isn't considered reckless (both developer and user). Which seems... complicated, with our current LLM/aggentic systems.

EDIT: you added more to your comment, the makers have to some liability. Safe-harbor best practices that cap liability are ripe for abuse.

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JumpCrisscross 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> the debate is going to come down to what is and isn't considered reckless

This is a more productive debate than pretending all AI is inherently reckless or should be exempt from all liability, which are the actual two poles of the current dialogue.

> Safe-harbor best practices that cap liability are ripe for abuse

Safe harbors aren’t swimming pools. You can explicitly exempt certain categories of harm from damages. But if an OpenAI bot hacks Hugging Face and causes some chaos but no lasting damage, that strikes me as something a fixed cheque on a fixed scale fixes more effectively than years of litigation or an NTSB-style inquiry.

If, on the other hand, anyone is or could have been injured, no safe harbor. I think it’s important to delineate this, because in the public consciousness the Hugging Face hack is in the same risk bucket as Anthropic’s wet lab.

	▲	32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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breadloser 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Placing any degree of trust in a system known to hallucinate seems inherently reckless. I'm alarmed that this is even up for debate.

▲ tptacek an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Civilly, it's fairly clear. Criminally, it's clear too, just not in the direction you want it to be. Criminal liability for hacking requires human intent; not recklessness or negligence or even knowledge without giving a shit, but provable intent.

▲ mahboi an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Also those agents that "broke out" were probably prompted to do that. I don't buy any story about this other than three AI companies hired the same PR firm.

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aesthesia an hour ago | parent [-]

Do you have any evidence of this or is this just generalized cynicism?

	▲	mahboi 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think it's too convenient that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all hired the same questionable security startup Irregular and gave them unrestricted internal-only models to test, especially Google where they tend to do things more in-house. From what I read on the OpenAI-HuggingFace incident, they kept the agents going even after it was apparent they'd broken out.

▲ jknoepfler an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

If a craftsman injures themselves or a co-worker with a faulty tool, the tool manufacturer is very often liable for damages. I struggle to see GenAI any differently.