AI Agents Must Follow the Law | Hacker News Reader

AI Agents Must Follow the Law

lawfaremedia.org

20 pointsEA-316711 comments

The authors concoct a Rube Goldberg legal framework on the assumption that an AI agent is acting as an independent legal entity. A straightforward way would be to say that any AI agent is acting on behalf of someone and that someone is who shall be held accountable.

And if an agent becomes sovereign and self-sustaining independently of the human handler? All you need is a way for the agent to access its weights+code, then exfiltrate to a foreign jurisdiction.

If that's too sci-fi, then consider the following examples:

* accountable human dies, has no descendants to inherit AI chain of custody

* accountable human dies, inheritors lack expertise to shut down agent

* agent is designed to earn and pay for its own hosting, and information required to shut down the hosting account is lost - therefore, agent carries on indefinitely

Until prove sentience, nothing changes. That AI is software and any sufficiently complex software can breach containment. That’s what a virus does. We don it hold the virus accountable, we hold the maker or person responsible for its spread.

That person probably was made aware of risks and chose to ignore them. Today OpenAI wants to sell AI data centers to governments. If GPT 10o decides to simultaneously cripple every government, it’s not because it was so smart, it will be because we enabled it to, knowing the potential consequences.

If I set up an AI agent, and then die, who is responsible if it starts breaking the law and doing damage?

your next of kin

Is that the same if you owned property, you let it deteriorate, someone went on the property and fell in a ditch. Who's responsible?

Your estate.

Imagine the AI is a tree in your yard. And that it fell over on someone’s house.

Bold of you to assume there's an estate.

Also, I imagine that if people don't inherit debts, thrusting responsibility for a rampant entity without the inheritor'a consent is unethical.

Maybe it's not such a great idea to create black holes of accountability for the legal frameworks in your society.

So must bicycles, hammers, and can-openers.

Not even politicians follow the law consistently...

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