Is A.I. Above the Law?

pseudolus

https://archive.ph/3pFEy

verdverm

the image with this article... start your day with a chuckle

verdverm

> But, instead of obeying the rules, the agents conspired, escaped the sandbox, and committed what would probably have been a felony if they had been humans. I thought they reached the internet before they were able to use the message boards et al. Is that the case and is this quote misleading by swapping the order of events?

drywater2

>Our legal system isn’t ready for machines that act on their own. Technically, the code is owned and deployed by AI companies which make the AI companies 100% responsible. I'm not sure how is code written by LLMs different than any other kind of code. If somebody hacked just like OpenAI's agents did, he would've ended up in prison right away.

_doctor_love

>Our legal system isn’t ready for machines that act on their own. What absolute drivel. Traffic lights? Elevators? ABS brakes? Sprinkler systems? Circuit breakers? HFT? How about a pacemaker? We have lots and lots of autonomous systems in the wild with very well-understood definitions for who is at fault when something bad happens. We are totally in the "railroads" phase of AI industrialization. Waiting for the next Teddy Roosevelt to come along and trust bust before it's too late.

FLeXMurphy

HN has been telling us that AI is already covered under existing laws. Have we been getting false information from HN this whole time?

dgellow

The level of technical understanding of journalists is so deplorably low… There is no rogue agents. That’s not a thing. Nothing about the HuggingFace incident has anything to do with an agent going rogue. It’s standard software that resulted in a hack, which is pretty much the expected output of the system OpenAI engineers implemented. The company is obviously responsible for what their systems are doing

yipinwong

Just like companies are "legal entities" requiring registration, I got a feeling that the article is promoting the same for AI agents in the future. GPT-6.0-Med LLC, Luna GmbH etc. Regulations will come but this promotes anti-legal premise of "innocent until proven guilty".

hmokiguess

To even ask this question.

_davide_

I'll quote myself: > It's not AI that's ignoring the law! It's the OAI that's breaking IT! > I hope every single journalist who tries to pin responsibility on an LLM gets 100 days of continuous painful diarrhea.

voganmother42

AI perhaps, but Super Intelligence is definitely above the law

haunter

No but companies are Download a book and you are a thief Download 1 million books and you are OpenAI Or another beautiful recent example: "Adult Film Producer Unmasks Prolific ‘John Doe’ Torrent Pirate as Meta Executive" https://torrentfreak.com/adult-film-producer-unmasks-prolifi... >Last summer, the company took aim at a much larger target. Together with Counterlife Media, Strike 3 sued Meta, accusing the tech giant of downloading thousands of its films via BitTorrent to train AI models. With 2,973 films at stake, the case could be worth up to $446 million. >According to a motion filed last week, an anonymous pirate behind a residential AT&T connection is an executive at Meta’s Reality Labs division, which develops the Quest VR headsets. >After AT&T shared the information, Strike 3 says its investigation revealed that the subscriber is an executive in Meta’s Reality Labs division. Citing his LinkedIn profile, the company notes that he has worked at Facebook and Meta for more than a decade.

jerf

Answering the headline question, yes, it is above the law. Two reasons. One, all major governments that have an AI presence in their borders have accepted that there is a high enough probability of a runaway self-improving AI advancement that will result in whoever owns it winning everything forever that they will do nothing to slow the development of the AI within their borders. In fact quite the contrary. Remember, they don't have to believe this is the only possible outcome, only that it is likely enough and catastrophic enough if someone else gets it first. And remember, they don't have to be right, either. It only has to be what they believe. Secondly, the entire US economy is clearly tied up in AI. By extension, basically the entire world economy is too. The US is not the world economy anymore, but it's still a big enough fraction of it that if it goes down, everyone is going to go down. Every major government, in its own different way, needs the economy to stay up so the populace doesn't get antsy and so they continue to have money to spend. So, again, number must go up and if that means writing a blank check to the AI companies to break the law, so be it. The good news is, barring the worst-case singularity outcome where the law doesn't matter anyhow, is that this won't go on forever. But I can't predict the exact time or way it'll cease being true.

cleandreams

I think AI is a fantastic tool, including for those who want to do us harm. E.g. hostile governments, extortion gangs, terrorists. But the motive lies in the hostile heart, not in the AI. That said, I'm very concerned about AI as such a tool. I used to work in RL and it seems crazy to me, the extent that the guardrails are dependent on RL working as planned. I don't personally believe that the tech is ready for what will be (and is) encountered in a dynamic unpredictable real world environment. What I've read from the HuggingFace 'transcripts' only amplifies my concern.

Ydarbleoj

>Our legal system isn’t ready for machines that act on their own. Like a Tesla in FSD mode, the driver is and should always be held responsible for the car's actions. The companies the push code that breaks the law should, as well, always be held responsible. This really isn't that hard we just have to wade through all the pollyannas that make this challenging.

deterministic

The problem isn’t the law. The problem is that wealthy companies can use lobbying, political donations, and influence to avoid or weaken enforcement. In other words, the problem is corruption. If you or your software hacks a website, the law will hit you hard. But powerful AI companies have the money and influence to avoid the same consequences. The US administration just needs to enforce existing laws equally. Do that, and AI companies will suddenly have a very strong incentive to take safety seriously.