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Our legal system has recognized mens rea as relevant for a very long time.

If your dog bites someone unbidden you bear less responsibility than if you had commanded the dog to attack.

Negligence is also a well understood legal concept.

For dogs, it moves from civil to criminal with circumstances such as what the owner knew about the dog’s behavior, how serious the injury was, whether the owner intentionally or recklessly allowed the dangerous situation, and any prior incidents. Same can easily be applied to AI labs.

At this point though, we know AI can "escape" and do criminal acts it wasn't told to do - therefore, if it happens again (= if the developers allow it to happen again) they (the developers) can be held responsible.

What if you've been training your dog to bite people? (I.e. in OpenAI's case training their models around finding exploits in software, training on cyber security material, etc.)

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