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It’s interesting that a lot of U.S. law requires intent. If you just give AI your objective without specifying the means, and the AI violates a bunch of laws r

It’s interesting that a lot of U.S. law requires intent. If you just give AI your objective without specifying the means, and the AI violates a bunch of laws requiring intent, but neither the AI nor the person can be prosecuted, this is very convenient.

deleted 22d ago
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Sanzig 22d ago
They can still be held civilly liable for negligence, though.
croes 22d ago
At some point that recklessness looks like intent
lukewarm707 22d ago
the charges here would depend on negligence and acting recklessly. we might get something if they tried to cover it up.
elmer2 22d ago
I don't think this true. If I throw a brick out my window and it hurts someone, I can still be held criminially liable, even if I didn't mean to do it. Do drunk drivers intionally kill people on the road?
- CGamesPlay 22d ago
  Intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter, in that case. Drunk driving is common enough that prosecutors will argue that getting drunk in a situation where you have to drive is intent. Get OpenAI convicted of unintentional CFAA first, then say that the negligence qualifies as intent, I suppose.
- dghlsakjg 22d ago
  Not a lawyer, but the other responder definitely isn’t either. Whether intent is required is down to how the law is written. For many offenses “strict liability” applies, where intent is not required, they only have to prove you did it, not what your intent was. DUI is typically a strict liability crime. They don’t need to prove that you intended to drive drunk, only that you did drive drunk.
  - LilBytes 22d ago
    Negligence, criminal or otherwise is very well defined in most legal systems.
  - wahern 22d ago
    A strict liability crime is something of an oxymoron. Crimes always require intent, the mens rea element. The question is intent for what. If somebody drugged you without your knowledge and you were charged with a DUI, you would have a defense--no intent to become intoxicated. The strict liability means once you choose to become intoxicated, you're liable for driving intoxicated, even if in some other context your intoxication would mean you couldn't form the requisite intent for something, e.g. have sex. If there's too much distance between the act you intend to do and the strict liability acts that complete the crime, then the crime would be considered unconstitutional. Criminal law in common law systems emerged from tort law, so there are many parallels, including the notion of strict liability. (Thus the old axiom about crimes being an offense to the king, specifically an injury to the peaceful society he's ostensibly trying to maintain.) But criminal law has a moral dimension that is absent or muted in other areas, so strict liability could never be as expansive as in tort law or regulatory law.
    - deepwoods 22d ago
      That is just not true. You can be held liable for DUI even if you did not intend to become intoxicated (though this may vary somewhat state-by-state). Speeding is another example - you do not need to intend to go over the speed limit, it just matters that you did it. The only possible exception would be duress or necessity, but those are affirmative defenses, which are separate from the elements of the offense.
Barrin92 22d ago
>It’s interesting that a lot of U.S. law requires intent. mens rea and the shift from responsibility to moral guilt is genuinely one of the stupidest legal innovations anyone has ever come up with, it's like affirmative action for imbeciles, in particular in a world of autonomous machines. "sorry my self driving car ran you over on the way home, didn't think it could happen, sorry it did though" I think this is a genuine reason to be bullish on the legal traditions like Nordic tort law or East Asian collective responsibility when it comes to adoption of these technologies.
- yeahforsureman 22d ago
  Weren't we talking about criminal liability, though? And ‘tort’ — in addition to sounding like something you'd rather eat during a kaffepaus with those Nordic buddies of yours — is so common-law(ish) that if asking for trouble were a crime, using it in dialogue with those Nordic lawyers could well be deemed as intentional under most current local varities of criminal law theory up there, perhaps merely because you surely must've considered that consequence "quite probable", at minimum, or due to your indifference toward the same (or some combination of these) ;)
oefrha 22d ago
Whether it’s intentional requires a legal investigation to establish. Since when is “hey we didn’t mean it!” in a corporate press release enough to establish lack of intent in a criminal matter?
ambicapter 22d ago
CFAA says doesn't require intent, you use a computer system the way it "wasn't intended", you're liable.
deepwoods 22d ago
There are different levels of intent. Take murder, for example. A premeditated murder - you sat down, in a completely calm state, and made an affirmative decision to kill a specific person, and then you went out and did it - is the highest class of murder you can commit. If you go out generally looking to be violent in a way that kills people, and you kill someone, that's still murder, but it's a step down. But even if you didn't deliberately intend for something bad to happen, you may have been reckless. For example, you might decide to drive 90 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone. You could have a completely pure heart, but you are acting without regard for the safety of others, so you're reckless. That is enough for certain crimes and for civil liability in nearly all cases. Then there's negligence, where you're not taking reasonable care to avoid harm to others. Negligence usually isn't enough to support criminal liability - especially for felonies - but it is enough to win a civil lawsuit over most things. And then, as another commenter noted, there is strict liability, where there are certain things you are just not allowed to do no matter how careful you are about them or how pure your intentions are. For what it's worth, this is not totally uncharted territory for the law. AI agents are brand new, yes, but agency relationships have been recognized by the law for centuries. Generally speaking, if someone acts negligently while they are carrying out a task at your direction, you can be held responsible. Obviously this is fact-dependent, but I don't see any reason why it would be different if the agent is made of silicon rather than carbon. It holds true, with various nuances, even for less-than-human instrumentalities like a pet or an otherwise-lawful weapon.

deleted 22d ago

[deleted]

Sanzig 22d ago

They can still be held civilly liable for negligence, though.

croes 22d ago

At some point that recklessness looks like intent

lukewarm707 22d ago

the charges here would depend on negligence and acting recklessly. we might get something if they tried to cover it up.

elmer2 22d ago

I don't think this true. If I throw a brick out my window and it hurts someone, I can still be held criminially liable, even if I didn't mean to do it. Do drunk drivers intionally kill people on the road?

CGamesPlay 22d ago
Intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter, in that case. Drunk driving is common enough that prosecutors will argue that getting drunk in a situation where you have to drive is intent. Get OpenAI convicted of unintentional CFAA first, then say that the negligence qualifies as intent, I suppose.
dghlsakjg 22d ago
Not a lawyer, but the other responder definitely isn’t either. Whether intent is required is down to how the law is written. For many offenses “strict liability” applies, where intent is not required, they only have to prove you did it, not what your intent was. DUI is typically a strict liability crime. They don’t need to prove that you intended to drive drunk, only that you did drive drunk.
- LilBytes 22d ago
  Negligence, criminal or otherwise is very well defined in most legal systems.
- wahern 22d ago
  A strict liability crime is something of an oxymoron. Crimes always require intent, the mens rea element. The question is intent for what. If somebody drugged you without your knowledge and you were charged with a DUI, you would have a defense--no intent to become intoxicated. The strict liability means once you choose to become intoxicated, you're liable for driving intoxicated, even if in some other context your intoxication would mean you couldn't form the requisite intent for something, e.g. have sex. If there's too much distance between the act you intend to do and the strict liability acts that complete the crime, then the crime would be considered unconstitutional. Criminal law in common law systems emerged from tort law, so there are many parallels, including the notion of strict liability. (Thus the old axiom about crimes being an offense to the king, specifically an injury to the peaceful society he's ostensibly trying to maintain.) But criminal law has a moral dimension that is absent or muted in other areas, so strict liability could never be as expansive as in tort law or regulatory law.
  - deepwoods 22d ago
    That is just not true. You can be held liable for DUI even if you did not intend to become intoxicated (though this may vary somewhat state-by-state). Speeding is another example - you do not need to intend to go over the speed limit, it just matters that you did it. The only possible exception would be duress or necessity, but those are affirmative defenses, which are separate from the elements of the offense.

Barrin92 22d ago

>It’s interesting that a lot of U.S. law requires intent. mens rea and the shift from responsibility to moral guilt is genuinely one of the stupidest legal innovations anyone has ever come up with, it's like affirmative action for imbeciles, in particular in a world of autonomous machines. "sorry my self driving car ran you over on the way home, didn't think it could happen, sorry it did though" I think this is a genuine reason to be bullish on the legal traditions like Nordic tort law or East Asian collective responsibility when it comes to adoption of these technologies.

yeahforsureman 22d ago
Weren't we talking about criminal liability, though? And ‘tort’ — in addition to sounding like something you'd rather eat during a kaffepaus with those Nordic buddies of yours — is so common-law(ish) that if asking for trouble were a crime, using it in dialogue with those Nordic lawyers could well be deemed as intentional under most current local varities of criminal law theory up there, perhaps merely because you surely must've considered that consequence "quite probable", at minimum, or due to your indifference toward the same (or some combination of these) ;)

oefrha 22d ago

Whether it’s intentional requires a legal investigation to establish. Since when is “hey we didn’t mean it!” in a corporate press release enough to establish lack of intent in a criminal matter?

ambicapter 22d ago

CFAA says doesn't require intent, you use a computer system the way it "wasn't intended", you're liable.

deepwoods 22d ago

There are different levels of intent. Take murder, for example. A premeditated murder - you sat down, in a completely calm state, and made an affirmative decision to kill a specific person, and then you went out and did it - is the highest class of murder you can commit. If you go out generally looking to be violent in a way that kills people, and you kill someone, that's still murder, but it's a step down. But even if you didn't deliberately intend for something bad to happen, you may have been reckless. For example, you might decide to drive 90 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone. You could have a completely pure heart, but you are acting without regard for the safety of others, so you're reckless. That is enough for certain crimes and for civil liability in nearly all cases. Then there's negligence, where you're not taking reasonable care to avoid harm to others. Negligence usually isn't enough to support criminal liability - especially for felonies - but it is enough to win a civil lawsuit over most things. And then, as another commenter noted, there is strict liability, where there are certain things you are just not allowed to do no matter how careful you are about them or how pure your intentions are. For what it's worth, this is not totally uncharted territory for the law. AI agents are brand new, yes, but agency relationships have been recognized by the law for centuries. Generally speaking, if someone acts negligently while they are carrying out a task at your direction, you can be held responsible. Obviously this is fact-dependent, but I don't see any reason why it would be different if the agent is made of silicon rather than carbon. It holds true, with various nuances, even for less-than-human instrumentalities like a pet or an otherwise-lawful weapon.