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Comment by marcuskaz | Hacker News Reader

You.

I agree in principle that the buck has to stop somewhere, but taking full responsibility for the actions of a fundamentally statistical system that you didn't build and have no interpretability of is uncomfortably risky for most parties, at least for anything above low stakes tasks.

> taking full responsibility ... is uncomfortably risky

I look forward to someone building an agent, getting criminally charged for actions it takes, and then trying to use this argument in court.

"your honor, I'm uncomfortable being held responsible for this"

people are responsible for the actions they take. hiding behind "I just created an agent, then the agent committed the crime" is simply never going to fly.

in the real world, outside the Silicon Valley "agentic everything" filter bubble, this is a laughable question.

try to argue that you shouldn't be charged with attempted murder, because you didn't stab someone directly, instead you built a Rube Goldberg machine and the final step of the machine did the stabbing.

and likewise, try to argue that you didn't commit tax fraud or whatever, because there was actually a Rube Goldberg machine built out of GPUs in between you and the fraudulent documents. both attempts will be equally successful.

I don't think that argument was meant for a court, which is there to deal with existing law. I believe it was meant for what the law should be.

You probably shouldn't use a system if you don't understand what it might do. You are the culpable force setting the action into motion.

That's only true if you reasonably can be expected to know that it might do whatever it did and you haven't been mislead by the people selling the system. If you use a product as directed, for the thing it was advertised to do, and it causes harm no reasonable person would expect, the company is to blame.

Do you take full credit for the output of the LLM ? If you accept the rewards for what you do with the LLM's output, it's probably ethical that you also take on the risks.

That's only true if the risks are reasonable, understood, and expected. Driving a car is risky, but if someone sells you a car that goes flying into incoming traffic because of a flaw in the design the car company is to blame. "Drivers know cars are dangerous and risky" isn't acceptable.

Then don't use an agent for high stakes tasks. If you can't drive and accept the responsibility for avoiding a fatal collision, don't drive the car.

I find some of the discomfort and awkwardness of discussing these what-ifs is reduced, at least slightly, when we distinguish between:

1. Restorative justice, where one must fix or heal the problem they caused.

2. Punitive Justice, where one is motivated not to act on bad impulses.

Too often we blur the lines between responsibility and blame and culpability. A given set of consequences can be fair/just for one kind while "unfair" for another.

I agree. That is a great reason why you shouldn't let an LLM do those things. If you must use an LLM, sandbox it. If you can't trust your sandbox, then stop using the LLM until you can trust the sandbox. "But I find it really useful to YOLO without safeguards" is not a valid excuse.

if you are not willing to assume that responsibility, then don't use it.

You buy a tool, and the manufacturer says "this tool will occasionally malfunction, by design". You reply with "ok, I'll keep it in mind. In what ways can it malfunction, so I know what to look for?", "I dunno. It could be anything. A-NY-THING! And of course we are not responsible for any bad stuff that happens (but do share your success stories, as they look good in marketing)"

If you accept those terms, it's on you.

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