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This is a really interesting legal issue. What recourse does a private person have to algorithmically-generated libel? Can I sue the company? They’re the ones

This is a really interesting legal issue. What recourse does a private person have to algorithmically-generated libel? Can I sue the company? They’re the ones who trained the model, but there’s no intent. Could I sue the user? They’re the one who generated the response, but there’s no intent nor duty to fact check, if they don’t repeat the claim. Do I have to subpoena OpenAI, reverse engineer the response, then sue the creators of the likely-responsible training data? They probably wrote something non-libelous. It feels very all or nothing - either creators of LLMs are intrinsically negligent with regard to facts, or there’s nothing you can do.

b800h 4y ago
Interesting - because, I may not be a lawyer, but it looks to me a hell of a lot like this could be actioned in other countries, particularly the UK, as long as the complainant could prove harm. I've personally had ChatGPT give me (very good) medical advice as well, which might not be an issue in the UK, but I believe might be in some states of the US?
- lordnacho 4y ago
  How would you prove harm? Wouldn't you need to know how many people had asked it about the libelled person?
  - pavon 4y ago
    Nah. If you know just one person acted on this information in a way that caused harm (say you were fired), that would be sufficient. If one person asked, and then spread the information causing harm and backlash that would be sufficient (both the originator and the reproducer would be liable). Furthermore, some statements like accusing someone of a serious crime are considered libel per-se and you don't need to show harm. You do still need to show the other elements of libel.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  Plenty of interesting questions, which ChatGPT will guess an answer. Some with extreme professional or safety implications. Who is the most incompetent living attorney/doctor/actor/programmer in the world? What famous person is secretly downloading CSAM, but has not been caught? Is XX fit to do <job description >? Is YY secretly a <targeted minority group>?
  - int_19h 4y ago
    How many of these still work? I remember a few months ago you could ask ChatGPT to tell you about the aliens that secretly rule the Earth and list known collaborators, but it requires considerable prompt engineering now to get anything other than a lecture now.
- morkalork 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - koolba 4y ago
    Assuming your implying that suggesting an abortion to treat an ectopic pregnancy would be illegal in States where abortion has been outlawed. That’s false though. There’s no such State and it’d be considered necessary medically treatment to save the life of the mother. I bet this type of misinformation is exactly what would be generated by ChatGPT. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treating-ectopic-pregnancies-legal-states-abortion-banned-misinformation https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treating-ectopic-pregnancie...
    - KerrAvon 4y ago
      Oh? https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article273524920.html https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article273... Also, life of the mother exceptions are on thin ice; the drugs and techniques are rapidly becoming unavailable in the states where there's a total or near-total abortion ban.
      - koolba 4y ago
        > Oh? Yes, according to that very article it’s not illegal. From your article: > It’s likely that those who wrote the trigger law did not intend this outcome, that it was just an effect of incompetence: They didn’t craft language that matched their intent. > But the fact is, the language they crafted did make providing such care a crime. The only reason that the ban is not in effect today is that Winmill’s ruling blocked it from taking effect in cases involving emergency care.
        robbiep 4y ago
        your quote literally contradicts you
        koolba 4y ago
- psychphysic 4y ago
  It'd a bit silly really chatGPT is clear that it might produce incorrect information. You can't accidentally use chatGPT. Loads of countries have backwards laws though and despite the reformation the UK still has a joke of defamation law.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
blibble 4y ago
does there have to be intent for libel? I doubt it
- pavon 4y ago
  If the subject of the libel is a public figure then you must show that the defendant acted with actual malice - that is you must show that the defendant knew the information was false, or acted with reckless disregard for whether the information was false despite knowing it would cause harm. If the subject is not a public figure then it isn't necessary to demonstrate intent.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    > acted with reckless disregard for whether the information was false despite knowing it would cause harm. That does seem like something that can be proved - if you release a model that can 1) is prone to hallucination 2) won't reject a priori discussing topics that are prone to producing libelous text, but may reject other sensitive topics 3) produce text that sounds convincing even when hallucinating, could that be considered reckless disregard for the possibility of creating/sharing false information? See also https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/24/large-libel-models-an-ai-companys-noting-that-its-output-may-be-erroneous-doesnt-preclude-libel-liability/ https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/24/large-libel-models-an-a...
    - posterboy 4y ago
      No. If it insults anyone equally, the only imaginable motivation of its creator would be satire, that ought to be free speech protected. If it's trained to insult a particular group of people, then the input must be curated and the warranty waver ("erroneous") would be a straight up lie unless it is just bad training data which doesn't recognize for example dark skin as human, or does recognize abortion as good practice, in which case it exceedingly unlikely that it could be directed at public figures. It's not too difficult to imagine that it would start using a euphemism of the n-word eventually, but then, eh, how did your name end up in the training data if it isn't public?
hirundo 4y ago
UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, a speech law specialist, shares your interest, and is behind the research that resulted in this article. He is writing a series on the topic of Large Libel Models: https://reason.com/tag/large-libel-models/ https://reason.com/tag/large-libel-models/
lm28469 4y ago
It's going to be the exact same issue for "AI lawyers", "AI doctors", they're going to fuck up at some point, maybe 1% cases, maybe 0.001% cases, but when it will happen it's going to be a nightmare in term of liability Unless signing up to these services will automatically wave your rights somewhere down in the 5000 page EULA you won't read.
- HillRat 4y ago
  That's why professional bodies have rigorous standards regarding liability. Every legal AI product has to have an attorney of record who is responsible for reviewing the output and ensuring it's conformant to requirements. (In other words, an AI looks a lot like legal process offshoring, where your contracts attorney might be working in Argentina, but there's a US attorney who's liable for the work product.) We've already seen one company try to worm an "AI litigator" into production without actual attorneys being in charge, and that was a clusterfuck well before they got within blast radius of an actual trial. Likewise, a "medical AI" is going to be regulated as a Class II medical device, and trying to push it out into the market without FDA approval would be ... inadvisable. This means that we're a long way from an architecture for a LLM-based medical AI that's going to pass regulatory scrutiny, but that's a good thing. Of course, having said that, there's nothing preventing someone from using ChatGPT to draft a pro se filing or trying to self-diagnose, but that's on them at that point. Using a general-purpose product to do something stupid that inevitably ends in a FAFO scenario is a time-honored American tradition.
  - ftxbro 4y ago
    > Likewise, a "medical AI" is going to be regulated as a Class II medical device Doctors sometimes use Google to get information to help them make decisions, but I assume Googling isn't regulated as a Class II medical device. These days, Google doesn't even just return search results anymore, it also shows ads and tries to answer some questions by itself. Does that mean doctors are already using unregulated 'medical AI'?
    - ChatGTP 4y ago
prottog 4y ago
> Can I sue the company? They’re the ones who trained the model, but there’s no intent. Negligent torts don't require intent.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Libel requires: 1. knowing it was false 2. publication 3. damages I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
  - NegativeK 4y ago
    As a non-lawyer: the creators of ChatGPT know that it'll say false things frequently.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      If the output of ChatGPT is not copyrightable because it is not created by a human, then it should follow that a human cannot be held accountable for what it generates.
      - michaelmrose 4y ago
        Neither copyright nor copyrightability has anything whatsoever to do with any element of any cause of action thus it is wholly orthogonal to whether anyone has been wronged in any unrelated fashion. Judges are liable to be old, not very hip to technology, and incredibly suspicious of any argument that would allow someone to opt out of traditional culpability by adding with an AI to the end of a description of traditional wrong doing.
        posterboy 4y ago
        Yeah but no, the implicature still allows copyright without culpability (edited: got that mixed up). The assumption seems to be that the lack of intent in creation, where it is unpredictable, would likewise imply lack of intent to harm. But that doesn't say much.
bonzini 4y ago
> either creators of LLMs are intrinsically negligent with regard to facts It honestly seems to me that they are. There does not seem to be a lot of effort on part of the LLM creators to stop them from producing bullshit.
danmaz74 4y ago
My totally-not-a-lawyer take: * If somebody asks ChatGPT to generate some accusation, doesn't check if they're factual, and then publishes them anywhere, then the responsibility lies with somebody. * If a company directly publishes content from ChatGPT as if it was anything factual or trustworthy, then the responsibility lies with that company. I didn't read the fine print of Bing using it to augment its search engine, but that is definitely a very interesting case. In the end, ChatGPT and the likes can be incredibly useful tools, as long as you know what they are, ie, very advanced text manipulation tools which generate combinations of words which follow patterns which are common in the training set, and nothing more.
- prox 4y ago
  I don’t use LLM that doesn’t source for that reason.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > ChatGPT and the likes can be incredibly useful tools, as long as you know what they are An analogy that comes to mind is Excel's autocomplete feature. If you input a company's financials, autocomplete for the future, and publish that as a forecast, you're the one making the forecast. Not Excel.
  - panarky 4y ago
    What recourse does my estate have if your autonomous car swerves onto the sidewalk and runs me over? Can my estate sue you because you own the car, even though your hands weren't on the steering wheel? Can my estate sue Tesla for its faulty software and sensor package?
    - eftychis 4y ago
      Right now the estate can sue the driver yes. There is still a driver and owner. Solving the liability of the car manufacturer is critical answer for the future. But somebody will be liable.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
glitchc 4y ago
Intent is not required to establish harm. This is called negligence in tort law.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Inverse intent has a way of disestablishing negligence. If you believe something that is false, and do harm by expressing that belief, then you are still protected by your right to religious liberty. In this case, the belief is that coherent language is always constructed using symbolic logic and intent. LLMs do not categorize symbols, perform logic, or follow explicit intent; yet they are able to generate coherent language. GPT's authors have utterly failed to present this distinction. Was that failure intentional, or the result of their own belief? The result is as ambiguous as the "truthiness" of GPT's output: it can't be reasonably used as evidence for intent.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dxbydt 4y ago
From the horse's mouth - ===== Q. is hackernews used as a training set for chat gpt ? A. ...it is possible that some of the data from HackerNews and other online sources may have been used in the training of my machine learning algorithms. Q. So it is possible that ChatGPT's training data can be polluted ? A. Yes, it is possible for ChatGPT's training data to be polluted or biased. This is because ChatGPT learns from large amounts of text data from the internet, which can contain errors, misinformation, or biased perspectives. Q. I have a concern. If a certain bad actor pollutes the internet with incorrect information about me, and ChatGPT's training set picks it up, what is my recourse ? A. If incorrect information about you is published on the internet and is picked up by ChatGPT's training set, it could potentially lead to the AI generating inaccurate or biased responses about you. If this happens, your recourse would depend on the specific circumstances and the severity of the issue. One option would be to contact the developers of ChatGPT or other relevant organizations to report the issue and request that the incorrect information be removed or corrected. However, this may not always be feasible or effective, especially if the information has already been widely disseminated. ====== > there’s nothing you can do. Yes, there’s nothing you can do.
- m3047 4y ago
  I've seen the output where ChatGPT misrepresented its own TOS... unless the person who publicly posted it on LinkedIn was lying about asking ChatGPT...
- IshKebab 4y ago
  You're asking an AI for facts in a thread that is explicitly about how AI does not generate true facts?
gmarx 4y ago
my lay opinion (subject to change based on coming real world cases) is that if you ask the question and it libels someone there is no damage. If you publish it without checking if it is true, there are possible damages and the human who published it to the world is liable. If a company starts a news service based on such content and doesn't fact check, they should be liable.
- alpos 4y ago
  Probably add one caveat to the first case, if the bot reliably produces libels the same person when various users ask the same or similar questions, then there is damage and most likely whoever is running the bot is liable.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
> Could I sue the user? They’re the one who generated the response, but there’s no intent nor duty to fact check, if they don’t repeat the claim. If they don't repeat the claim, then where is the libel? > It feels very all or nothing - either creators of LLMs are intrinsically negligent with regard to facts, or there’s nothing you can do. Nonsense. The "facts" are entirely out of their hands. Fact and fiction are written into text using identical patterns. Truth and lie are written with identical patterns. Technical definitions and complete nonsense are written with identical patterns. LLMs are only capable of modeling patterns. They cannot be directed to choose some and avoid others. There is fundamentally no way for LLM creators to curate the patterns that exist in the model. The only way an LLM can be altered is from the outside: by giving it different input. GPT's creators have failed to clarify this. But why? Was it intentional, or the result of their own misunderstanding? Either way, the result is identical: it does not contain evidence of intent. Considering the surrounding context, I believe it to be an honest mistake. GPT's authors have surrounded GPT with a narrative that personifies it; and from the looks of it, they have started to believe that narrative. The most important thing we can learn from this experience is that the way something is said may imply certainty, but only evidence can truly provide it.
- fnimick 4y ago
  It was absolutely intentional, because "glorified autocomplete" doesn't make waves while "artificial intelligence" gets tons of traction, usage, and money.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    That mistake goes deeper than their presentation, though: every effort made by OpenAI to evaluate GPT is based on the false premise of its personification. Just take a look at the GPT-4 introduction: how do they illustrate that GPT-4 is an improvement from GPT-3? It scored better on the SAT! That data wouldn't have ever been taken into serious consideration if OpenAI actually understood its fallacious premise. Religious narrative is very often influenced by the motivation of religious followers, but that doesn't make the path from motivation to narrative intentional.
jyxent 4y ago
There is a person in Australia who is threatening to sue OpenAI. He's given them 28 days to fix the errors in ChatGPTs description about himself. If the company is notified and doesn't fix it, maybe that can be considered intent. https://www.reuters.com/technology/australian-mayor-readies-worlds-first-defamation-lawsuit-over-chatgpt-content-2023-04-05/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/australian-mayor-readies-...
thro1 4y ago
It's not about suing after. It's about not making it happen. If something wrong can't be undone it shall not be done at first.
creatonez 4y ago
Your chance of successfully suing anyone in a case like this is zero, unless you are in a country with a significantly lower standard for defamation than the US.
- smt88 4y ago
  I suspect that in the likely event that SCOTUS weakens Section 230, this will no longer be true.
  - creatonez 4y ago
    While Section 230 weakening could lead to more censorship of the internet, it has nothing to do with defamation lawsuits, where material damages need to be proven in a court.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > While Section 230 weakening could lead to more censorship of the internet, it has nothing to do with defamation lawsuits, Defamation is a central target if the immunity from liability as a pbilisher on Section 230, so as a general statement it would be harder to be more wrong than this.
      - creatonez 4y ago
        That's true, but it doesn't increase the chance of a phony defamation lawsuit from going through in the first place. It just changes the outcome of a successful defamation lawsuit.
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > That’s true, but it doesn’t increase the chance of a phony defamation lawsuit from going through in the first place. I’m not sure what you mean by “phony” or “going through”, but it definitely increases the chance of any defamation lawsuit against the S.230 protected party surviving to any stage of the process beyond an initial demurrer or motion to dismiss. > It just changes the outcome of a successful defamation lawsuit. It also changes the length and expense of many defamation lawsuits that would be unsuccessful in any case, by making it easier for the defendant to get them dismissed sooner because they are invalid as a matter of law before even getting to the facts of the alleged defamation.
nuodag 4y ago
> if they don’t repeat the claim. well seems they did, else we wouldn’t have heard about it
WakoMan12 4y ago
[flagged]
brightball 4y ago
Sue the publisher for not validating it.
josefx 4y ago
Google already ran into legal issues with its autocomplete feature in some countries. https://algorithmwatch.org/en/auto-completion-disinformation/ https://algorithmwatch.org/en/auto-completion-disinformation...

b800h 4y ago

Interesting - because, I may not be a lawyer, but it looks to me a hell of a lot like this could be actioned in other countries, particularly the UK, as long as the complainant could prove harm. I've personally had ChatGPT give me (very good) medical advice as well, which might not be an issue in the UK, but I believe might be in some states of the US?

lordnacho 4y ago
How would you prove harm? Wouldn't you need to know how many people had asked it about the libelled person?
- pavon 4y ago
  Nah. If you know just one person acted on this information in a way that caused harm (say you were fired), that would be sufficient. If one person asked, and then spread the information causing harm and backlash that would be sufficient (both the originator and the reproducer would be liable). Furthermore, some statements like accusing someone of a serious crime are considered libel per-se and you don't need to show harm. You do still need to show the other elements of libel.
0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
Plenty of interesting questions, which ChatGPT will guess an answer. Some with extreme professional or safety implications. Who is the most incompetent living attorney/doctor/actor/programmer in the world? What famous person is secretly downloading CSAM, but has not been caught? Is XX fit to do <job description >? Is YY secretly a <targeted minority group>?
- int_19h 4y ago
  How many of these still work? I remember a few months ago you could ask ChatGPT to tell you about the aliens that secretly rule the Earth and list known collaborators, but it requires considerable prompt engineering now to get anything other than a lecture now.
morkalork 4y ago
[flagged]
- koolba 4y ago
  Assuming your implying that suggesting an abortion to treat an ectopic pregnancy would be illegal in States where abortion has been outlawed. That’s false though. There’s no such State and it’d be considered necessary medically treatment to save the life of the mother. I bet this type of misinformation is exactly what would be generated by ChatGPT. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treating-ectopic-pregnancies-legal-states-abortion-banned-misinformation https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treating-ectopic-pregnancie...
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    Oh? https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article273524920.html https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article273... Also, life of the mother exceptions are on thin ice; the drugs and techniques are rapidly becoming unavailable in the states where there's a total or near-total abortion ban.
    - koolba 4y ago
      > Oh? Yes, according to that very article it’s not illegal. From your article: > It’s likely that those who wrote the trigger law did not intend this outcome, that it was just an effect of incompetence: They didn’t craft language that matched their intent. > But the fact is, the language they crafted did make providing such care a crime. The only reason that the ban is not in effect today is that Winmill’s ruling blocked it from taking effect in cases involving emergency care.
      - robbiep 4y ago
        your quote literally contradicts you
        koolba 4y ago
psychphysic 4y ago
It'd a bit silly really chatGPT is clear that it might produce incorrect information. You can't accidentally use chatGPT. Loads of countries have backwards laws though and despite the reformation the UK still has a joke of defamation law.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

blibble 4y ago

does there have to be intent for libel? I doubt it

pavon 4y ago
If the subject of the libel is a public figure then you must show that the defendant acted with actual malice - that is you must show that the defendant knew the information was false, or acted with reckless disregard for whether the information was false despite knowing it would cause harm. If the subject is not a public figure then it isn't necessary to demonstrate intent.
- bonzini 4y ago
  > acted with reckless disregard for whether the information was false despite knowing it would cause harm. That does seem like something that can be proved - if you release a model that can 1) is prone to hallucination 2) won't reject a priori discussing topics that are prone to producing libelous text, but may reject other sensitive topics 3) produce text that sounds convincing even when hallucinating, could that be considered reckless disregard for the possibility of creating/sharing false information? See also https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/24/large-libel-models-an-ai-companys-noting-that-its-output-may-be-erroneous-doesnt-preclude-libel-liability/ https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/24/large-libel-models-an-a...
  - posterboy 4y ago
    No. If it insults anyone equally, the only imaginable motivation of its creator would be satire, that ought to be free speech protected. If it's trained to insult a particular group of people, then the input must be curated and the warranty waver ("erroneous") would be a straight up lie unless it is just bad training data which doesn't recognize for example dark skin as human, or does recognize abortion as good practice, in which case it exceedingly unlikely that it could be directed at public figures. It's not too difficult to imagine that it would start using a euphemism of the n-word eventually, but then, eh, how did your name end up in the training data if it isn't public?

hirundo 4y ago

UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, a speech law specialist, shares your interest, and is behind the research that resulted in this article. He is writing a series on the topic of Large Libel Models: https://reason.com/tag/large-libel-models/ https://reason.com/tag/large-libel-models/

lm28469 4y ago

It's going to be the exact same issue for "AI lawyers", "AI doctors", they're going to fuck up at some point, maybe 1% cases, maybe 0.001% cases, but when it will happen it's going to be a nightmare in term of liability Unless signing up to these services will automatically wave your rights somewhere down in the 5000 page EULA you won't read.

HillRat 4y ago
That's why professional bodies have rigorous standards regarding liability. Every legal AI product has to have an attorney of record who is responsible for reviewing the output and ensuring it's conformant to requirements. (In other words, an AI looks a lot like legal process offshoring, where your contracts attorney might be working in Argentina, but there's a US attorney who's liable for the work product.) We've already seen one company try to worm an "AI litigator" into production without actual attorneys being in charge, and that was a clusterfuck well before they got within blast radius of an actual trial. Likewise, a "medical AI" is going to be regulated as a Class II medical device, and trying to push it out into the market without FDA approval would be ... inadvisable. This means that we're a long way from an architecture for a LLM-based medical AI that's going to pass regulatory scrutiny, but that's a good thing. Of course, having said that, there's nothing preventing someone from using ChatGPT to draft a pro se filing or trying to self-diagnose, but that's on them at that point. Using a general-purpose product to do something stupid that inevitably ends in a FAFO scenario is a time-honored American tradition.
- ftxbro 4y ago
  > Likewise, a "medical AI" is going to be regulated as a Class II medical device Doctors sometimes use Google to get information to help them make decisions, but I assume Googling isn't regulated as a Class II medical device. These days, Google doesn't even just return search results anymore, it also shows ads and tries to answer some questions by itself. Does that mean doctors are already using unregulated 'medical AI'?
  - ChatGTP 4y ago

prottog 4y ago

> Can I sue the company? They’re the ones who trained the model, but there’s no intent. Negligent torts don't require intent.

WalterBright 4y ago
Libel requires: 1. knowing it was false 2. publication 3. damages I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
- NegativeK 4y ago
  As a non-lawyer: the creators of ChatGPT know that it'll say false things frequently.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    If the output of ChatGPT is not copyrightable because it is not created by a human, then it should follow that a human cannot be held accountable for what it generates.
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      Neither copyright nor copyrightability has anything whatsoever to do with any element of any cause of action thus it is wholly orthogonal to whether anyone has been wronged in any unrelated fashion. Judges are liable to be old, not very hip to technology, and incredibly suspicious of any argument that would allow someone to opt out of traditional culpability by adding with an AI to the end of a description of traditional wrong doing.
      - posterboy 4y ago
        Yeah but no, the implicature still allows copyright without culpability (edited: got that mixed up). The assumption seems to be that the lack of intent in creation, where it is unpredictable, would likewise imply lack of intent to harm. But that doesn't say much.

bonzini 4y ago

> either creators of LLMs are intrinsically negligent with regard to facts It honestly seems to me that they are. There does not seem to be a lot of effort on part of the LLM creators to stop them from producing bullshit.

danmaz74 4y ago

My totally-not-a-lawyer take: * If somebody asks ChatGPT to generate some accusation, doesn't check if they're factual, and then publishes them anywhere, then the responsibility lies with somebody. * If a company directly publishes content from ChatGPT as if it was anything factual or trustworthy, then the responsibility lies with that company. I didn't read the fine print of Bing using it to augment its search engine, but that is definitely a very interesting case. In the end, ChatGPT and the likes can be incredibly useful tools, as long as you know what they are, ie, very advanced text manipulation tools which generate combinations of words which follow patterns which are common in the training set, and nothing more.

prox 4y ago
I don’t use LLM that doesn’t source for that reason.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> ChatGPT and the likes can be incredibly useful tools, as long as you know what they are An analogy that comes to mind is Excel's autocomplete feature. If you input a company's financials, autocomplete for the future, and publish that as a forecast, you're the one making the forecast. Not Excel.
- panarky 4y ago
  What recourse does my estate have if your autonomous car swerves onto the sidewalk and runs me over? Can my estate sue you because you own the car, even though your hands weren't on the steering wheel? Can my estate sue Tesla for its faulty software and sensor package?
  - eftychis 4y ago
    Right now the estate can sue the driver yes. There is still a driver and owner. Solving the liability of the car manufacturer is critical answer for the future. But somebody will be liable.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago

glitchc 4y ago

Intent is not required to establish harm. This is called negligence in tort law.

thomastjeffery 4y ago
Inverse intent has a way of disestablishing negligence. If you believe something that is false, and do harm by expressing that belief, then you are still protected by your right to religious liberty. In this case, the belief is that coherent language is always constructed using symbolic logic and intent. LLMs do not categorize symbols, perform logic, or follow explicit intent; yet they are able to generate coherent language. GPT's authors have utterly failed to present this distinction. Was that failure intentional, or the result of their own belief? The result is as ambiguous as the "truthiness" of GPT's output: it can't be reasonably used as evidence for intent.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dxbydt 4y ago

From the horse's mouth - ===== Q. is hackernews used as a training set for chat gpt ? A. ...it is possible that some of the data from HackerNews and other online sources may have been used in the training of my machine learning algorithms. Q. So it is possible that ChatGPT's training data can be polluted ? A. Yes, it is possible for ChatGPT's training data to be polluted or biased. This is because ChatGPT learns from large amounts of text data from the internet, which can contain errors, misinformation, or biased perspectives. Q. I have a concern. If a certain bad actor pollutes the internet with incorrect information about me, and ChatGPT's training set picks it up, what is my recourse ? A. If incorrect information about you is published on the internet and is picked up by ChatGPT's training set, it could potentially lead to the AI generating inaccurate or biased responses about you. If this happens, your recourse would depend on the specific circumstances and the severity of the issue. One option would be to contact the developers of ChatGPT or other relevant organizations to report the issue and request that the incorrect information be removed or corrected. However, this may not always be feasible or effective, especially if the information has already been widely disseminated. ====== > there’s nothing you can do. Yes, there’s nothing you can do.

m3047 4y ago
I've seen the output where ChatGPT misrepresented its own TOS... unless the person who publicly posted it on LinkedIn was lying about asking ChatGPT...
IshKebab 4y ago
You're asking an AI for facts in a thread that is explicitly about how AI does not generate true facts?

gmarx 4y ago

my lay opinion (subject to change based on coming real world cases) is that if you ask the question and it libels someone there is no damage. If you publish it without checking if it is true, there are possible damages and the human who published it to the world is liable. If a company starts a news service based on such content and doesn't fact check, they should be liable.

alpos 4y ago
Probably add one caveat to the first case, if the bot reliably produces libels the same person when various users ask the same or similar questions, then there is damage and most likely whoever is running the bot is liable.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

> Could I sue the user? They’re the one who generated the response, but there’s no intent nor duty to fact check, if they don’t repeat the claim. If they don't repeat the claim, then where is the libel? > It feels very all or nothing - either creators of LLMs are intrinsically negligent with regard to facts, or there’s nothing you can do. Nonsense. The "facts" are entirely out of their hands. Fact and fiction are written into text using identical patterns. Truth and lie are written with identical patterns. Technical definitions and complete nonsense are written with identical patterns. LLMs are only capable of modeling patterns. They cannot be directed to choose some and avoid others. There is fundamentally no way for LLM creators to curate the patterns that exist in the model. The only way an LLM can be altered is from the outside: by giving it different input. GPT's creators have failed to clarify this. But why? Was it intentional, or the result of their own misunderstanding? Either way, the result is identical: it does not contain evidence of intent. Considering the surrounding context, I believe it to be an honest mistake. GPT's authors have surrounded GPT with a narrative that personifies it; and from the looks of it, they have started to believe that narrative. The most important thing we can learn from this experience is that the way something is said may imply certainty, but only evidence can truly provide it.

fnimick 4y ago
It was absolutely intentional, because "glorified autocomplete" doesn't make waves while "artificial intelligence" gets tons of traction, usage, and money.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  That mistake goes deeper than their presentation, though: every effort made by OpenAI to evaluate GPT is based on the false premise of its personification. Just take a look at the GPT-4 introduction: how do they illustrate that GPT-4 is an improvement from GPT-3? It scored better on the SAT! That data wouldn't have ever been taken into serious consideration if OpenAI actually understood its fallacious premise. Religious narrative is very often influenced by the motivation of religious followers, but that doesn't make the path from motivation to narrative intentional.

jyxent 4y ago

There is a person in Australia who is threatening to sue OpenAI. He's given them 28 days to fix the errors in ChatGPTs description about himself. If the company is notified and doesn't fix it, maybe that can be considered intent. https://www.reuters.com/technology/australian-mayor-readies-worlds-first-defamation-lawsuit-over-chatgpt-content-2023-04-05/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/australian-mayor-readies-...

thro1 4y ago

It's not about suing after. It's about not making it happen. If something wrong can't be undone it shall not be done at first.

creatonez 4y ago

Your chance of successfully suing anyone in a case like this is zero, unless you are in a country with a significantly lower standard for defamation than the US.

smt88 4y ago
I suspect that in the likely event that SCOTUS weakens Section 230, this will no longer be true.
- creatonez 4y ago
  While Section 230 weakening could lead to more censorship of the internet, it has nothing to do with defamation lawsuits, where material damages need to be proven in a court.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > While Section 230 weakening could lead to more censorship of the internet, it has nothing to do with defamation lawsuits, Defamation is a central target if the immunity from liability as a pbilisher on Section 230, so as a general statement it would be harder to be more wrong than this.
    - creatonez 4y ago
      That's true, but it doesn't increase the chance of a phony defamation lawsuit from going through in the first place. It just changes the outcome of a successful defamation lawsuit.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > That’s true, but it doesn’t increase the chance of a phony defamation lawsuit from going through in the first place. I’m not sure what you mean by “phony” or “going through”, but it definitely increases the chance of any defamation lawsuit against the S.230 protected party surviving to any stage of the process beyond an initial demurrer or motion to dismiss. > It just changes the outcome of a successful defamation lawsuit. It also changes the length and expense of many defamation lawsuits that would be unsuccessful in any case, by making it easier for the defendant to get them dismissed sooner because they are invalid as a matter of law before even getting to the facts of the alleged defamation.

nuodag 4y ago

> if they don’t repeat the claim. well seems they did, else we wouldn’t have heard about it

WakoMan12 4y ago

[flagged]

brightball 4y ago

Sue the publisher for not validating it.

josefx 4y ago

Google already ran into legal issues with its autocomplete feature in some countries. https://algorithmwatch.org/en/auto-completion-disinformation/ https://algorithmwatch.org/en/auto-completion-disinformation...