hmm, if you give a gun to someone you know is unreliable and tends to shoot things at random, is that really negligence? I'd argue it's malice?

Could be either negligence or malice.

I find a lot of results when searching "gun maker sued for hair trigger", just as I can find results for various AI companies getting sued for helping users commit harm to themselves or others.

Given there's nigh on a billion ChatGPT users, my question would be: what's the fail-dangerous rate for these models? With that many users, we'd could not possibly fail to notice if it was as bad as 0.001% of the advice given each day being dangerous when followed; but we may well not notice if one-in-a-million responses end up helping someone plan a mass shooting, or breed the bacteria that makes botulism toxin in what was supposed to be "help me make garlic infused olive oil without cooking", etc.

We have approximations on the risk levels, but unfortunately the models demonstrably respond differently during tests vs. in the wild and we don't know how important that difference is.

That would potentially rise to the level of recklessness but it is still not intent.

(To be clear, negligence and recklessness can still be criminal, but it is a matter of law what combination of act and mental state is criminal, and so the main question to me is whether there is currently any law in the US that would cover this case, given that the most obvious one, the CFAA, doesn't currently include recklessness or negligence)

To me it seems obvious that there should be some update to the law in this regard, but I'm not sure exactly what form is reasonable. (Arguably the CFAA should already have a stronger requirement for harm given how it's sometimes used to attack researchers reporting a problem. In most of the cases the labs are reporting it's not obvious there is notable harm).

This is possibly going to be what others will rely on when they want to prove gross negligence.