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Comment by bastawhiz | Hacker News Reader

Nothing you're bringing up matters. OpenAI is the creator and operator. They're legally culpable for the consequences of the machine they made. The model is a machine: even if it could be demonstrated that the model reasoned its way into criminal behavior completely independently of OpenAI staff, that doesn't change anything.

If I run a biology lab and engineer a terrible virus, it gets out, and a global pandemic ensues, I don't get to shrug and say "well we told it not to infect people". It's my fault for failing to mitigate the risks of my work.

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> it gets out, and a global pandemic ensues

I mean, yea, you should be punished. The problem is there is no amount of punishment that I can put on you that can even get anywhere close to the amount of damage you cased.

Worse, the rate of technological growth is putting the capabilities to engineer viruses in the hands of people that may otherwise be suicidal. You can't punish them after they already won (in the sense of reaching their goals).

While, yes, OAI should absolutely be punished, the future is majorly screwed as our power scaling laws are increasing much faster than our ability not to be stupid.

> The problem is there is no amount of punishment that I can put on you that can even get anywhere close to the amount of damage you cased.

Sounds like your corporation should be dismantled then. But doing more than a fine in the millions is obviously not possible

I would love for the US to bring back the corporate death penalty but seeing as it hasn't been applied in >100 years here, we should start with regulating the frontier labs, including by slowing down capabilities advancement if we do not know how to align the resulting models.

you punish them hard enough their investors will have cold feet to keep the business going.

> The problem is there is no amount of punishment that I can put on you that can even get anywhere close to the amount of damage you cased.

That's never been the point. Anyone involved in a double homicide can never be punished to the same degree that they harmed their victims because they can't be put to death twice. The greater purpose of the justice system is to take offenders out of society and deter others from committing the same crimes. Punishment is gratifying but ultimately doesn't change anything.

If OAI employees believed their company would be dismantled and their equity would become worthless, I suspect they'd be a whole lot more careful.

> They're legally culpable for the consequences of the machine they made.

Ah, I love this argument. In my country cars are legally required to stop at a pedestrian crossing if there are people beside it. Some people use that as an argument as to why they can just walk out into the crossing without even looking at the traffic. "It's the driver's fault! They are legally culpable!" True, but you'll also be dead.

I'm not going to say you're victim-blaming, but I will say that there are degrees of difference between "looking both ways before crossing the street" and "hardening my website against unforeseen attacks by rogue AI agents."

AI black-hatting your website is not the same sort of foreseeable consequence that crossing the street without looking is.

> I'm not going to say you're victim-blaming, but

Just throwing it out there are we? "I'm not going to say you are but I'll use the word to create an association"

Victim-blaming is the act of saying someone brought something on themselves for <reasons>. I'm saying that even if you are 100% in the right, it doesn't act like a protective shield preventing you from harm which too many people seem to unconsciously believe.

> AI black-hatting your website is not the same sort of foreseeable consequence

Well, popular culture has been brimming with the bad consequences of runaway AI for quite some time, so even if your imagination fails you, there have been hints.

And that driver will be punished and no longer driving

Not generally true in the United States.

And you'd still be dead.

Yeah, this is on those irresponsible companies that...are offering Internet services. Those hussies.

You're arguing against a point literally nobody is making. You're inventing imaginary viewpoints to be mad at. Nobody is saying it's not necessary to secure your services. They're saying the organization responsible for the hacks (the owner of the LLM) is responsible for damages.

Nonsense comparison. It would instead be like me saying "I didn't fail to stop, the car did."

But moreover, if what you were suggesting was a real problem, nobody would ever be brought to justice for murder because the victims are always dead.

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