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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

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
    > What recourse does my estate have if your autonomous car swerves onto the sidewalk and runs me over I do. If I set off a defective firework that careens sideways into your house, I'm liable. I may have a further claim against the manufacturer. But your claim is against me. This is why Mercedes announcing self-driving car liability is such a big deal [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car_liability [2] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/mercedes-well-be-liable-for-self-driving-cars/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/mercedes-well-be-liable-for-sel...
    - panarky 4y ago
      What would my estate sue you for, exactly? Negligence? Because a negligence claim requires my estate to prove that you failed to exercise reasonable care. If the AI is generally reliable, it's reasonable for you to trust it and take your hands off the wheel. If the AI suddenly goes berserk, it would be hard to prove that you breached your duty of care, and are liable for negligence.
      - knodi123 4y ago
        In the firework example, you can still sue the person who fired the defective firework, because they should have known that unpredictable behavior was a possibility, and taken steps to prevent that from escalating into some damage. Likewise, suing the person behind the wheel of the self-driving car for negligence should work. Because the "non-driving driver" had the ability to seize the wheel, and should have known that some boneheaded behaviors are a risk with these early AIs.
        zeven7 4y ago
        Does this change of there is no wheel for the passenger to seize?
        e_i_pi_2 4y ago
        If you're the owner of the car then I'd say it doesn't change - you chose to take that vehicle out on the road knowing it didn't have a way for you to control it. You can take the steering wheel off of your car with a wrench, you could build a computer to steer it for you, you're still primarily responsible as the owner. The owner could then try to go after the company, but they're still ultimately responsible even if the company doesn't cover the cost for them
  - fallat 4y ago
    Frame it this way... what do we already do when person X uses tool Y wrong (and tool Y is not malfunctioning) and does damage? Do you sue the tool manufacturer? Rarely, if ever. You sue the person using it.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    In Europe, if you are using Tesla and there is an accident while self-driving is engaged, then you are the one responsible (Tesla says they don't take any legal responsibility), but if you are driving a Mercedes while self-driving is engaged, Mercedes takes the legal responsibility.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - wilg 4y ago
      Though there are many articles about this legal responsibility, it's not completely clear to me if the Mercedes Drive Pilot system is actually purchasable, and if so if the liability works this way. Their German website [1] says (translated by Google): > Our driver assistance and safety systems are aids and do not release you from your responsibility as a driver. Observe the information in the operating instructions and the system limits described there. It also seems to only work in extremely ideal conditions [2]: > They must be on one of the nation's 8200 miles of autobahn highway in traffic traveling at no more than 60 km/h (37 mph) in dry conditions and away from tunnels or construction zones. So basically only works on traffic jams on the autobahn in good weather with no construction. How many accidents are happening in these conditions? This seems like marketing fluff more than anything. [1] https://www.mercedes-benz.de/passengercars/technology/drive-pilot.html https://www.mercedes-benz.de/passengercars/technology/drive-... [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a39966189/2022-mercedes-benz-eqs-drive-pilot-drive/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a39966189/2022-mercedes...
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      Tesla says a lot of crap to be honest, and their argument wouldn't hold for a second in court if someone held responsible for an autopilot incident sues Tesla back.
      - rvnx 4y ago
        Lucky for them that the autopilot often disengages before a crash. https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-investigation-shutoff-crash/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-invest...
  - kristjansson 4y ago
    Until law and precedent change, the person behind the wheel is responsible for operating the vehicle, you’d sue them. If, in the future, some combination of autonomy and legal invention change that, you’d sue the entity bearing responsibility under whatever new framework. No matter the case, though, the law will not throw up its hands, and say there’s no one liable for this tragedy.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
The most important thing about natural language is that is is ambiguous. LLMs (like GPT) are intended to work despite that ambiguity: they cannot resolve it. Any time a pattern of text can be used to represent more than one meaning, LLMs lose all of their leverage. Only humans can determine after the fact whether the result is - as GPT's authors have presented it - a "feature" or a "limitation".
godelski 4y ago
> 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. It's quite impressive to me how many journalists just take citations at their word. Isn't the point of journalism to verify information? OpenAI, if you're reading I got a innovative new algorithm for reducing AI harm for fake citations `if not(link_exists(generated_link)) print(f"[CITATION NOT FOUND]") else print(generated_link)` I have a more advanced algorithm that uses a small language model to click links that exist and verifies direct quotes. I call this model Regex. Joking aside, I really do think the problem can be seriously reduced in a simple manner, but also people really need to check their sources. Thou shalt verify sources, be they generated by the hand of man or of artificial beings. - John 3:16
- kurthr 4y ago
  I do wonder if there's any extra liability for stating as fact auto generated material (especially about non-famous people) when using a tool known to create gibberish. For comedy and entertainment I have more tolerance. For he who uses large language models to autocomplete their claims in greed and sloth shall be damned unto the third generation. - Exodus 34:7
- asdff 4y ago
  Move fast and break things is in journalism too. Its faster to just publish a story to hit the deadline, then if someone gets pissy over what you wrote to correct the article after the fact, than it is to do all your due diligence and make sure every detail is correct. Newsrooms are often in a race to publish ahead of others for certain stories too.
  - godelski 4y ago
    That's selling a faulty product and being highly deceitful. In no way can I support this.
    - asdff 4y ago
      Its the reality of journalism. They aren't being deceitful, they just don't have time to validate each and every little detail. Its usually minor stuff though. The story takes place at King Auto and they accidentally use the address for Kings Auto Parts instead in the article, or something like that.
wwweston 4y ago
Orienting on responsible use of a tool seems like a good place to start, and I'm sure that will be especially important as individuals and organizations delegate decisions that can affect people's lives to various agents like ChatGPT. We don't want a situation where they're tempted to simply hide behind the agent to avoid responsibility. I'm less sure that's where it should stop. It doesn't seem right to set up a situation introducing powerful transformative tools without any obligations for the people creating it. And as far as I understand it there is indeed a layer of law where manufacturers can be subject to some standards of responsibility.
msla 4y ago
> I didn't read the fine print of Bing using it to augment its search engine, but that is definitely a very interesting case. This might be going against the pro-business attitude of HN, but there's limits to what fine print can accomplish. You can't disclaim away defamation law, you have to convince a court that what you did wasn't defamatory for some articulable reason beyond "I say it isn't" or "I said I wasn't responsible" or some other stock phrase.
mdasen 4y ago
As a counterpoint to this argument, the reason we have libel/slander laws is that people hear something and don't check if they're factual. If I say, "danmaz74 eats babies," some people are going to believe it and not check that you don't eat babies. That's the problem with saying false things about people. Likewise, if ChatGPT says false things about people, some people will believe those false things - even if they don't publish anything or repeat them. Those false beliefs then have repercussions. Section 230 doesn't eliminate libel. It just notes that the libel is being done by the person writing the information - ie. the user who posts it rather than the site that is merely hosting the information. It notes that the user is self-publishing the information. In this case, ChatGPT is publishing this "information" itself. If we hold that ChatGPT isn't responsible for what they publish, we say that no one is liable for this defamation. That's not what Section 230 does. Section 230 just notes who the publisher is - the user who wrote the information. We are determining who is the person doing the action. We could require sites to check everything. We could require your ISP to inspect all packets to make sure they don't contain libel. We could require your electric company to make sure that devices connected to their network aren't being used to send/receive libelous things. We don't because that would be a bit absurd and because the actual fault lies with a human being. In the case of ChatGPT, it seems like we still need to be identifying a culprit. Let's say that I start auto-generating news articles. I don't check them (I don't even look at them) before they are published on my site. This is the same mechanic as ChatGPT - it's just auto-generated stuff. Therefore, I'm not liable under your definition. It's up to the readers of my site to decide to check this auto-generated stuff. I agree that ChatGPT can be a useful tool. At the same time, I'm not sure we want to create a system where people can absolve themselves of liability by auto-generating stuff. Even without intent, one can be guilty of libel. Maybe the answer is that ChatGPT should be able to defend itself by showing what sources caused that generation and that the generation was reasonable. For example, a newspaper is expected to carefully check multiple reasonable sources. If ChatGPT can cite multiple reasonable sources (and it has interpreted those sources correctly), then the blame can be those sources. If ChatGPT cannot, then the blame might be on ChatGPT. As you note, ChatGPT can be useful - and the more useful it gets, the more people will accept its statements as true. I think simply saying "as long as you know what they are," feels like someone trying to say both things - they're incredibly useful and completely trash! It's like when a company tells shareholders "we have a stranglehold on the market" and then tells the government "we have so much competition we're struggling to survive." You can't have both. You can be a novelty tool that you and everyone else thinks of as a joke or you can have a serious tool where libel is a serious issue. The Onion can publish satire because it's a satire site. The NYTimes can't publish something that sounds like a serious NYTimes article and then claim, if sued, that it was actually a satire article and that 100% of readers just read it as serious when it was meant as satire. If a significant part of our future starts coming from these language models, we will have to ensure a certain standard of care around what they say.
manicennui 4y ago
Isn't presenting answers to questions the same as publishing when it comes to ChatGPT? How many people must ChatGPT provide defamatory answers to before it becomes defamation?
- wvenable 4y ago
  ChatGPT is a text generator. It's a tool. It's not publishing anymore than MS Word is publishing. You can certainly take that output of the tool and publish it but then you become the publisher.
  - catchnear4321 4y ago
    Wait wait wait you’re saying the operator is accountable for their actions? Just like ChatGPT was programmed to drill into a user any time it picks up on being misused? Reminding the user that they are ultimately responsible and liable for their actions, including how they use the output? From how some make it sound, you would think ChatGPT was giving press conferences. > oh no but what if it did? Did it set itself up to do so? No? You found the liable humans.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Okay, what if you s/ChatGPT/BingChat?
  - brigandish 4y ago
    ChatGPT is a text generator whose output is published on a publicly accessible website. That's a bit different than MS Word autocompleting something in a private document.
    - wvenable 4y ago
      So you're saying that Google Docs is a greater liability than MS Word locally? Every ChatGPT session is personal. You write a prompt and generate output. You're not publishing that output.
mysterydip 4y ago
> 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. What happens when new models have scraped factually wrong data about a person that has propogated, then someone asks the next chatgpt "tell me about person x" and it spits out the bad learned data?
- pixelbath 4y ago
  How is the future bad data different from the current bad data?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    A generation will grow up asking an AI all its questions with implicit trust in the results. While this happens to a degree now with seerch engines and wikipedia, there's multiple sources you can check.
x86x87 4y ago
Oh yes. The old "it's AI" when it's convenient and "it's just a tool" when it's convenient. Which one is it? I this it's just an autocomplete on steroids, a powerful bullshitting machine. The fear I have is that this bullshit is going to pollute the digital world pretty much the same way SEO made it impossible to get good results when using a search engine.
- deleted 4y ago
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- BoorishBears 4y ago
  I never get this "it's just an autocomplete on steroids" take. When you form a sentence do you catalog every single word in the english language then pick one before saying a word? Or do you have an understanding that for a given word there are only so many words that could follow? - AI is a tool. And it's as much a bullshit generator as a human telling a story they definitely completely remember very vividly... https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happened-memory-recollection https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happe... If you misremember the suspect in a case and go around telling everyone the wrong guy committed a crime, you get sued because you went around telling everyone that, not because you misremembered.
  - nextaccountic 4y ago
    > When you form a sentence do you catalog every single word in the english language then pick one before saying a word? That's how markov chain chat bots (a very old technology) works: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5306729/how-do-markov-chain-chatbots-work https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5306729/how-do-markov-ch... https://www.baeldung.com/cs/markov-chain-chatbots https://www.baeldung.com/cs/markov-chain-chatbots That's not how ChatGPT works though, because of the attention mechanism
    - jhbadger 4y ago
      Exactly. The way that LLMs have been "debunked" in simplified writings on the Web and in media is to suggest that they are just Markov chains like the famous "Mark V. Shaney"[1] bot from the 1980s, and LLMs are far more powerful than that. Yes, we need to debunk claims that LLMs have achieved sentience and such nonsense, but let's not ignore just how amazing they are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney
crazygringo 4y ago
I think the question is less what people do with ChatGPT's output, and more with the output itself. If ChatGPT makes the same libelous claim in its output to 100,000 people, that doesn't seem particularly different from a libelous claim printed in a newspaper with circulation of 100,000. Microsoft/OpenAI can put down all the legalese disclaimers they want, but if they market ChatGPT/Bing as a tool that provides useful answers, the disclaimers don't protect from libel. By analogy, the NYT can't put a disclaimer in its paper that none of its reporting should be considered truthful in order to protect itself from libel suits -- it just won't work in court. (And yes there are tabloids that print nonsense stories about aliens and Elvis and Brad Pitt, which are for "entertainment purposes only", but the different is the average consumer knows it's a bunch of nonsense, just like The Onion. Parody/fiction is protected.) So I actually think this is going to be the biggest question/risk by far in terms of commercializing ChatGPT etc. -- much more important than the copyright status of training material. Because the courts don't decide libel on disclaimers, they decide on harm and how a reasonable person interprets things. If they market Bing/ChatGPT as a useful research tool with advertisements showing it giving correct answers etc. that leads to people believing its lies are true, then there's a real risk libel suits are going to shut the whole thing down. On the other hand, to make sure they can operate, they may have to market the thing basically as a toy -- a magic 8 ball, a Mad Libs generator. A disclaimer isn't enough, it means they need to avoid any kind of advertising or product positioning that ever depicts it as giving useful/correct information at all. No more homework help, no more trip planning, no more search tool. Which basically sinks the product. But which is also arguably the best outcome -- that Microsoft/OpenAI shouldn't be permitted to market it as anything but a constantly-lying toy.
nathan_compton 4y ago
"* 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." But OpenAI at least tacitly suggests that ChatGPT can be used for information retrieval. I know they also say that it can generate false information, but its not hard to see how this could cause problems.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"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." Well yes. But what would you do, if ChatGPT, that is used by 100 mio+ people, consistently would asssociate your name with sex crimes? Would you shrug it off, because "people know it is just a imperfect tool"? Throw enough dirt and something will stick, so I would try to get my name cleared ASAP from ChatGPT. But apparently there is no working mechanisms to do so. And this is not acceptable. If people are tinkering with llms in their basement and it spits out nonsense, no one cares. But ChatGPT is offering an online service for laypersond to use. So if they consistently smear people, then they do have responsibility to stop it.

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
  > What recourse does my estate have if your autonomous car swerves onto the sidewalk and runs me over I do. If I set off a defective firework that careens sideways into your house, I'm liable. I may have a further claim against the manufacturer. But your claim is against me. This is why Mercedes announcing self-driving car liability is such a big deal [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car_liability [2] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/mercedes-well-be-liable-for-self-driving-cars/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/mercedes-well-be-liable-for-sel...
  - panarky 4y ago
    What would my estate sue you for, exactly? Negligence? Because a negligence claim requires my estate to prove that you failed to exercise reasonable care. If the AI is generally reliable, it's reasonable for you to trust it and take your hands off the wheel. If the AI suddenly goes berserk, it would be hard to prove that you breached your duty of care, and are liable for negligence.
    - knodi123 4y ago
      In the firework example, you can still sue the person who fired the defective firework, because they should have known that unpredictable behavior was a possibility, and taken steps to prevent that from escalating into some damage. Likewise, suing the person behind the wheel of the self-driving car for negligence should work. Because the "non-driving driver" had the ability to seize the wheel, and should have known that some boneheaded behaviors are a risk with these early AIs.
      - zeven7 4y ago
        Does this change of there is no wheel for the passenger to seize?
        e_i_pi_2 4y ago
        If you're the owner of the car then I'd say it doesn't change - you chose to take that vehicle out on the road knowing it didn't have a way for you to control it. You can take the steering wheel off of your car with a wrench, you could build a computer to steer it for you, you're still primarily responsible as the owner. The owner could then try to go after the company, but they're still ultimately responsible even if the company doesn't cover the cost for them
- fallat 4y ago
  Frame it this way... what do we already do when person X uses tool Y wrong (and tool Y is not malfunctioning) and does damage? Do you sue the tool manufacturer? Rarely, if ever. You sue the person using it.
- rvnx 4y ago
  In Europe, if you are using Tesla and there is an accident while self-driving is engaged, then you are the one responsible (Tesla says they don't take any legal responsibility), but if you are driving a Mercedes while self-driving is engaged, Mercedes takes the legal responsibility.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wilg 4y ago
    Though there are many articles about this legal responsibility, it's not completely clear to me if the Mercedes Drive Pilot system is actually purchasable, and if so if the liability works this way. Their German website [1] says (translated by Google): > Our driver assistance and safety systems are aids and do not release you from your responsibility as a driver. Observe the information in the operating instructions and the system limits described there. It also seems to only work in extremely ideal conditions [2]: > They must be on one of the nation's 8200 miles of autobahn highway in traffic traveling at no more than 60 km/h (37 mph) in dry conditions and away from tunnels or construction zones. So basically only works on traffic jams on the autobahn in good weather with no construction. How many accidents are happening in these conditions? This seems like marketing fluff more than anything. [1] https://www.mercedes-benz.de/passengercars/technology/drive-pilot.html https://www.mercedes-benz.de/passengercars/technology/drive-... [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a39966189/2022-mercedes-benz-eqs-drive-pilot-drive/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a39966189/2022-mercedes...
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Tesla says a lot of crap to be honest, and their argument wouldn't hold for a second in court if someone held responsible for an autopilot incident sues Tesla back.
    - rvnx 4y ago
      Lucky for them that the autopilot often disengages before a crash. https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-investigation-shutoff-crash/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-invest...
- kristjansson 4y ago
  Until law and precedent change, the person behind the wheel is responsible for operating the vehicle, you’d sue them. If, in the future, some combination of autonomy and legal invention change that, you’d sue the entity bearing responsibility under whatever new framework. No matter the case, though, the law will not throw up its hands, and say there’s no one liable for this tragedy.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

The most important thing about natural language is that is is ambiguous. LLMs (like GPT) are intended to work despite that ambiguity: they cannot resolve it. Any time a pattern of text can be used to represent more than one meaning, LLMs lose all of their leverage. Only humans can determine after the fact whether the result is - as GPT's authors have presented it - a "feature" or a "limitation".

godelski 4y ago

> 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. It's quite impressive to me how many journalists just take citations at their word. Isn't the point of journalism to verify information? OpenAI, if you're reading I got a innovative new algorithm for reducing AI harm for fake citations `if not(link_exists(generated_link)) print(f"[CITATION NOT FOUND]") else print(generated_link)` I have a more advanced algorithm that uses a small language model to click links that exist and verifies direct quotes. I call this model Regex. Joking aside, I really do think the problem can be seriously reduced in a simple manner, but also people really need to check their sources. Thou shalt verify sources, be they generated by the hand of man or of artificial beings. - John 3:16

kurthr 4y ago
I do wonder if there's any extra liability for stating as fact auto generated material (especially about non-famous people) when using a tool known to create gibberish. For comedy and entertainment I have more tolerance. For he who uses large language models to autocomplete their claims in greed and sloth shall be damned unto the third generation. - Exodus 34:7
asdff 4y ago
Move fast and break things is in journalism too. Its faster to just publish a story to hit the deadline, then if someone gets pissy over what you wrote to correct the article after the fact, than it is to do all your due diligence and make sure every detail is correct. Newsrooms are often in a race to publish ahead of others for certain stories too.
- godelski 4y ago
  That's selling a faulty product and being highly deceitful. In no way can I support this.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Its the reality of journalism. They aren't being deceitful, they just don't have time to validate each and every little detail. Its usually minor stuff though. The story takes place at King Auto and they accidentally use the address for Kings Auto Parts instead in the article, or something like that.

wwweston 4y ago

Orienting on responsible use of a tool seems like a good place to start, and I'm sure that will be especially important as individuals and organizations delegate decisions that can affect people's lives to various agents like ChatGPT. We don't want a situation where they're tempted to simply hide behind the agent to avoid responsibility. I'm less sure that's where it should stop. It doesn't seem right to set up a situation introducing powerful transformative tools without any obligations for the people creating it. And as far as I understand it there is indeed a layer of law where manufacturers can be subject to some standards of responsibility.

msla 4y ago

> I didn't read the fine print of Bing using it to augment its search engine, but that is definitely a very interesting case. This might be going against the pro-business attitude of HN, but there's limits to what fine print can accomplish. You can't disclaim away defamation law, you have to convince a court that what you did wasn't defamatory for some articulable reason beyond "I say it isn't" or "I said I wasn't responsible" or some other stock phrase.

mdasen 4y ago

As a counterpoint to this argument, the reason we have libel/slander laws is that people hear something and don't check if they're factual. If I say, "danmaz74 eats babies," some people are going to believe it and not check that you don't eat babies. That's the problem with saying false things about people. Likewise, if ChatGPT says false things about people, some people will believe those false things - even if they don't publish anything or repeat them. Those false beliefs then have repercussions. Section 230 doesn't eliminate libel. It just notes that the libel is being done by the person writing the information - ie. the user who posts it rather than the site that is merely hosting the information. It notes that the user is self-publishing the information. In this case, ChatGPT is publishing this "information" itself. If we hold that ChatGPT isn't responsible for what they publish, we say that no one is liable for this defamation. That's not what Section 230 does. Section 230 just notes who the publisher is - the user who wrote the information. We are determining who is the person doing the action. We could require sites to check everything. We could require your ISP to inspect all packets to make sure they don't contain libel. We could require your electric company to make sure that devices connected to their network aren't being used to send/receive libelous things. We don't because that would be a bit absurd and because the actual fault lies with a human being. In the case of ChatGPT, it seems like we still need to be identifying a culprit. Let's say that I start auto-generating news articles. I don't check them (I don't even look at them) before they are published on my site. This is the same mechanic as ChatGPT - it's just auto-generated stuff. Therefore, I'm not liable under your definition. It's up to the readers of my site to decide to check this auto-generated stuff. I agree that ChatGPT can be a useful tool. At the same time, I'm not sure we want to create a system where people can absolve themselves of liability by auto-generating stuff. Even without intent, one can be guilty of libel. Maybe the answer is that ChatGPT should be able to defend itself by showing what sources caused that generation and that the generation was reasonable. For example, a newspaper is expected to carefully check multiple reasonable sources. If ChatGPT can cite multiple reasonable sources (and it has interpreted those sources correctly), then the blame can be those sources. If ChatGPT cannot, then the blame might be on ChatGPT. As you note, ChatGPT can be useful - and the more useful it gets, the more people will accept its statements as true. I think simply saying "as long as you know what they are," feels like someone trying to say both things - they're incredibly useful and completely trash! It's like when a company tells shareholders "we have a stranglehold on the market" and then tells the government "we have so much competition we're struggling to survive." You can't have both. You can be a novelty tool that you and everyone else thinks of as a joke or you can have a serious tool where libel is a serious issue. The Onion can publish satire because it's a satire site. The NYTimes can't publish something that sounds like a serious NYTimes article and then claim, if sued, that it was actually a satire article and that 100% of readers just read it as serious when it was meant as satire. If a significant part of our future starts coming from these language models, we will have to ensure a certain standard of care around what they say.

manicennui 4y ago

Isn't presenting answers to questions the same as publishing when it comes to ChatGPT? How many people must ChatGPT provide defamatory answers to before it becomes defamation?

wvenable 4y ago
ChatGPT is a text generator. It's a tool. It's not publishing anymore than MS Word is publishing. You can certainly take that output of the tool and publish it but then you become the publisher.
- catchnear4321 4y ago
  Wait wait wait you’re saying the operator is accountable for their actions? Just like ChatGPT was programmed to drill into a user any time it picks up on being misused? Reminding the user that they are ultimately responsible and liable for their actions, including how they use the output? From how some make it sound, you would think ChatGPT was giving press conferences. > oh no but what if it did? Did it set itself up to do so? No? You found the liable humans.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Okay, what if you s/ChatGPT/BingChat?
- brigandish 4y ago
  ChatGPT is a text generator whose output is published on a publicly accessible website. That's a bit different than MS Word autocompleting something in a private document.
  - wvenable 4y ago
    So you're saying that Google Docs is a greater liability than MS Word locally? Every ChatGPT session is personal. You write a prompt and generate output. You're not publishing that output.

mysterydip 4y ago

> 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. What happens when new models have scraped factually wrong data about a person that has propogated, then someone asks the next chatgpt "tell me about person x" and it spits out the bad learned data?

pixelbath 4y ago
How is the future bad data different from the current bad data?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mysterydip 4y ago
  A generation will grow up asking an AI all its questions with implicit trust in the results. While this happens to a degree now with seerch engines and wikipedia, there's multiple sources you can check.

x86x87 4y ago

Oh yes. The old "it's AI" when it's convenient and "it's just a tool" when it's convenient. Which one is it? I this it's just an autocomplete on steroids, a powerful bullshitting machine. The fear I have is that this bullshit is going to pollute the digital world pretty much the same way SEO made it impossible to get good results when using a search engine.

deleted 4y ago
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BoorishBears 4y ago
I never get this "it's just an autocomplete on steroids" take. When you form a sentence do you catalog every single word in the english language then pick one before saying a word? Or do you have an understanding that for a given word there are only so many words that could follow? - AI is a tool. And it's as much a bullshit generator as a human telling a story they definitely completely remember very vividly... https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happened-memory-recollection https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happe... If you misremember the suspect in a case and go around telling everyone the wrong guy committed a crime, you get sued because you went around telling everyone that, not because you misremembered.
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  > When you form a sentence do you catalog every single word in the english language then pick one before saying a word? That's how markov chain chat bots (a very old technology) works: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5306729/how-do-markov-chain-chatbots-work https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5306729/how-do-markov-ch... https://www.baeldung.com/cs/markov-chain-chatbots https://www.baeldung.com/cs/markov-chain-chatbots That's not how ChatGPT works though, because of the attention mechanism
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    Exactly. The way that LLMs have been "debunked" in simplified writings on the Web and in media is to suggest that they are just Markov chains like the famous "Mark V. Shaney"[1] bot from the 1980s, and LLMs are far more powerful than that. Yes, we need to debunk claims that LLMs have achieved sentience and such nonsense, but let's not ignore just how amazing they are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney

crazygringo 4y ago

I think the question is less what people do with ChatGPT's output, and more with the output itself. If ChatGPT makes the same libelous claim in its output to 100,000 people, that doesn't seem particularly different from a libelous claim printed in a newspaper with circulation of 100,000. Microsoft/OpenAI can put down all the legalese disclaimers they want, but if they market ChatGPT/Bing as a tool that provides useful answers, the disclaimers don't protect from libel. By analogy, the NYT can't put a disclaimer in its paper that none of its reporting should be considered truthful in order to protect itself from libel suits -- it just won't work in court. (And yes there are tabloids that print nonsense stories about aliens and Elvis and Brad Pitt, which are for "entertainment purposes only", but the different is the average consumer knows it's a bunch of nonsense, just like The Onion. Parody/fiction is protected.) So I actually think this is going to be the biggest question/risk by far in terms of commercializing ChatGPT etc. -- much more important than the copyright status of training material. Because the courts don't decide libel on disclaimers, they decide on harm and how a reasonable person interprets things. If they market Bing/ChatGPT as a useful research tool with advertisements showing it giving correct answers etc. that leads to people believing its lies are true, then there's a real risk libel suits are going to shut the whole thing down. On the other hand, to make sure they can operate, they may have to market the thing basically as a toy -- a magic 8 ball, a Mad Libs generator. A disclaimer isn't enough, it means they need to avoid any kind of advertising or product positioning that ever depicts it as giving useful/correct information at all. No more homework help, no more trip planning, no more search tool. Which basically sinks the product. But which is also arguably the best outcome -- that Microsoft/OpenAI shouldn't be permitted to market it as anything but a constantly-lying toy.

nathan_compton 4y ago

"* 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." But OpenAI at least tacitly suggests that ChatGPT can be used for information retrieval. I know they also say that it can generate false information, but its not hard to see how this could cause problems.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"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." Well yes. But what would you do, if ChatGPT, that is used by 100 mio+ people, consistently would asssociate your name with sex crimes? Would you shrug it off, because "people know it is just a imperfect tool"? Throw enough dirt and something will stick, so I would try to get my name cleared ASAP from ChatGPT. But apparently there is no working mechanisms to do so. And this is not acceptable. If people are tinkering with llms in their basement and it spits out nonsense, no one cares. But ChatGPT is offering an online service for laypersond to use. So if they consistently smear people, then they do have responsibility to stop it.