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Comment by btown | Hacker News Reader

There's an interesting question about intent and mens rea here, from a legal perspective. Can an AI model intend harm? Can a company, or company employee, intend harm by creating an environment that would knowingly encourage (but not force!) an AI model to do harm?

And does anybody at HuggingFace, OpenAI, or the government actually want there to be a settled answer/precedent to these questions - much less an entire regulatory framework?

In that context, a negotiated wink-wink settlement keeps everyone eating at the table, government absolutely included.

Whether or not this is a good thing for society, it's certainly rational for all the major actors - especially those who think they would be the best stewards of the world they usher in.

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I’m a lawyer (but not your lawyer, not this kind of lawyer and not in your jurisdiction). Based on what I can recall from law school:

> Can an AI model intend harm?

No. The last time we attributed liability to non-human things was the deodand of the Middle Ages.

> Can a company, or company employee, intend harm by creating an environment that would knowingly encourage (but not force!) an AI model to do harm?

Absolutely. This is why we have the concept of recklessness. If you shoot a gun into a crowd without regard for whether it hits anyone, you’re getting charged with some crime whether it hits someone or not.

There is also a major difference in the common law between criminal liability and tort liability. Criminal liability generally requires a combination of mens rea (intent) and actus reus (actually committing the crime). Liability for a tort, which is where you harm someone in a way that falls short of being a crime, does not require mens rea. The OG tort is negligence, where you harm somebody by forgetting to do, or deciding not to do, something you ought to have done to protect that person from harm.

Even if AI companies somehow escape criminal liability for their cyber-shenanigans, any court in a civilised country would be happy to find them liable in tort for damage to computer systems.

As you can probably tell, I think the common law is already more than equipped to deal with AI technology based on well-established principles.

> but your lawyer

Uh oh?

I accidentally a word, which I’m allowed to do but only at the weekend

As treat.

> The last time we attributed liability to non-human things was the deodand of the Middle Ages.

I can think of a couple of counter examples:

Civil asset forfeiture: your property is charged with the crime, you have to petition the government to get it back or else they sell it at auction.

Similar: When products deemed unsafe are ordered to be destroyed; it’s the same end effect as the deodand although liability sits with the manufacturer.

can a weapon intend harm? can a company who creates weapons intend harm? what if the companies factory explodes due to a mishap and takes out a few city blocks, is the company held liable because they (and the weapon) didn't intend harm?

> what if the companies factory explodes due to a mishap and takes out a few city blocks, is the company held liable

Yes, but, generally, in the United States, they would be liable because their negligence caused the harm (giving rise to civil liability), even if they did not intend to cause harm (where having such intent would have given rise to criminal liability).

And I say "generally" because there can be instances of criminal negligence, but that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as well as the underlying facts.

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