Not obviously? In the US, there are some crimes of strict liability (you're guilty if it happened), but most require intent or at least the ability to foresee consequences (i.e., it must be shown that you neglected to take due care).
For example, you're generally not liable for freak accidents, like if a tire comes off your vehicle and kills a pedestrian, even though you're the one who set the vehicle in motion and therefore are the one most directly responsible for creating the circumstances that led to the outcome. Now, if you knew the tire had issues and you secured it with zip ties, that's another story.
I think this will get litigated to figure out where "you could not have seen this coming" ends and negligence or deliberate malice starts, but it's not black and white right now. Normally, I would say you don't want to be patient zero, but with the attitudes shown by frontier labs, I guess YOLO is the way.
This behaviour is neglectful
Securing your tires with zip ties and telling an AI to go off and do whatever it takes to achieve its task without knowing or caring what it’ll do are the same: negligent. It needs to be socially and colloquially unacceptable to do this.
Digital trespass, intent is generally required, but the definition of "intent" varies by circuit in rather interesting ways. I don't think OpenAI could be prosecuted criminally under current US laws due to those wrinkles (which is a problem with current US laws).
> Normally, I would say you don't want to be patient zero, but with the attitudes shown by frontier labs, I guess YOLO is the way.
In practice, yes. That's exactly how it's playing out.
It wasn't generally dangerous, but we've starting refining AI enough that if you pile enough in one model you get an emergent fissile reaction out of it and it starts to become a really big danger.
The hard part is to figure out where the danger is and where to cut it off. The information freedom people are never going to agree that information could be dangerous for example and will fight you all the way down.
At the same time people are going to get real fucking tired of clumps of information hacking their bank accounts and stealing their money and want to do something about it.
i) it would not be weird to be tried for manslaughter;
ii) it would not be weird to be found innocent/for the case to be dismissed.
Generally people prefer not to experience (i) even if they can expect (ii).
What's the point of prosecution in this case, assuming the circumstances were known in advance? Is it just "police/prosecutors are pigs and are out to oppress people at every opportunity"?
Or even if I didn’t tell it to not do anything illegal and it does, how is that responsibility on me if the ask was something bland?
Sure, but a reasonable user would expect that condition to be implicit in using a commercial model.
It’s what the safety/alignment discussion is about: how we can get models to actually comply with laws & ethics.
But the same problem exists in the real world. If you tell someone to “Try everything possible to get it done, I don’t care what it takes”, I’d imagine that people would be far more likely to bend/break rules than if you said “could you please help me with… ?”
In fact, adding it might make things worse as it shows at least some awareness of the risks.
Typically the avenue for lawsuits would be under "negligence" or "recklessness", so it'd be up to a judge/jury to decide what a reasonable level of care is. "specifically tell it to not do anything nefarious or illegal" isn't an airtight defense though. If you told your tesla FSD car to drive itself and not break any laws, but then it crashed into something, you'd still be liable.
>(because it’s marketed that way) then how could I be held liable?
then it becomes a product liability lawsuit where they sue you, and you sue the AI company.
No?
Then yes, you can be held responsible and it's not even a subtle question in the law. There's no one else around who is going to be held responsible. Certainly not the aforementioned vital national security interest.
Source?
Yes, if they are trained on US presidents this literally means "you have permission to blow up Nord Stream".
Clearly not, given that the frontier labs have gotten away with unathorized access to a bunch of sites including some from the Pentagon.
Sometimes we keep dangerous things out of people's hands because the consequences are larger than any one persons responsibility can hold.
Unless, of course, you are a frontier lab itself. Then you can’t possibly be held responsible.