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Comment by rmarques7 | Hacker News Reader

If the user has a special remote that, when pressed in a certain way, is capable of triggering a nuclear bomb, and if the user has no idea what clicking the buttons on that remote does (they are, after all, just trying to change channels), you’re telling me that the user is responsible for detonating that bomb, and not the company who build the remote (and did not provide detailed instructions on how that remote works, or configure the remote to Not detonate a bomb)?

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Usually, any functioning government that wants their country to keep existing would never let normal people anywhere close to such a remote. You wouldn't want your nuclear power plant to be accessible like a music festival either. But governments are slow and people were also allowed to freely buy and own uranium as late as the 1970s.

It is a thought experiment, not a real scenario

It was an explanation for why we see this allegedly insane behaviour. History is full of stuff that we consider ridiculously unsafe today with the benefit of hindsight. But people were not that different. They just didn't know better.

Hence many people are using this as an example of AI now.

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.

IANAL but it seems to me that:

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).

In America, prosecutors will not bring charges unless they're certain they can convict or browbeat you into a plea deal. Unless you have money for a good lawyer (the spending of which is a punishment itself), you will likely face some sort of punishment.

>i) it would not be weird to be tried for manslaughter;

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"?

Well broadly speaking manslaughter is, in my layman's understanding, the killing of a person as a consequence of actions but not of intent. That does fit the bill here, if applied literally (and this problem of pre-determining all the caveats and qualifications is why law is generally not 'code').

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