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Does it help if I explicitly add a disclaimer that the tool's agency does not remove any responsibility from OpenAI, the wielder of the tool? I'm not sure why t

Does it help if I explicitly add a disclaimer that the tool's agency does not remove any responsibility from OpenAI, the wielder of the tool? I'm not sure why this disclaimer is necessary, though: hiring a hitman is a standard example. BTW I anthropomorphize the tool because it's an imitation of a human mind, inheriting the muddy ethics, survival instincts, and being prone to mass psychosis. The laser-sharp focus on reward seeking, that mostly came from reinforcement learning, a process more alien to humans.

jwynot 13d ago
Hiring a hitman is conspiracy to commit murder. The hitman is charged with murder. I imagine the same could be true of an AI lab if you could prove intent. With intent, they could be found guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime even if it was the end user who did it. Source: Prosecuting attorney for over 30 years
- alluro2 13d ago
  It's a good example. If I hired a hitman to murder someone, and they broke into a private property and stole something so that they can action the murder (which I didn't know about or pay them to do), I would be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, but not for the theft part. Likely because that person is a human, is aware of societal and legal norms, and is responsible for their actions due to their participation in human society. (I am not a lawyer (if it wasn't painfully obvious so far) so in layman terms, I hope good definitions for all of this exist formally) AI is not a person - it cannot easily discern between "right" and "wrong" in non-strictly-defined sense, and is not subject to human norms and responsibility. So if I use AI to achieve goal A, either I, or the maker of AI, are fully responsible for anything that happens while AI is trying to achieve the goal given by me. Now, here, "I" in the example is OpenAI, who is simultaneously the maker of the AI. So it seems pretty obvious who is the only entity that can be responsible.
  - schrodinger 13d ago
    I fully agree with you, but would go one step further: I think it's clear that we need to pierce the corporate veil and ascribe responsibility to _people_, not just "OpenAI the entity", full stop. Executives should fear being perp-walked and thrown in jail for the actions of irresponsible "tests" of their models in the real world, as they're ultimately accountable. Sure, there's a lot of nuance to work out, but I think we could likely even _start_ there today even with existing laws and pretty quickly "align" on more intricate legal frameworks to handle true accidents, distribution of responsibility, etc.
alpinisme 13d ago
The objection is not too far from criticisms of the use of passive voice: a man was injured at the factory vs a faulty saw blade snapped and injured a man vs after the company loosened safety inspection policies, etc. Which way you say it shifts the framing. And it’s not that one is less accurate to the facts, necessarily. It just is that one less aptly captures the moral and political relevance of the scenario. For my part, I think it makes good sense to anthropomorphize in some contexts and not others. Generally when responsibility is at issue, you probably want the framing that tunes anthropomorphism down to near zero, since it’s the human dimension you care about.
jmcgough 13d ago
I think the danger of anthropomorphizing is that 99% of people lack the technical background to understand the nuance. People have been primed by pop culture depictions of AI to think of LLMs as intelligent, autonomous beings, which leads to dangerous assumptions. We should make the distinction between them, because openai and anthropic will not. A magical black box that does the thinking for you is a much more compelling sales pitch.

jwynot 13d ago

Hiring a hitman is conspiracy to commit murder. The hitman is charged with murder. I imagine the same could be true of an AI lab if you could prove intent. With intent, they could be found guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime even if it was the end user who did it. Source: Prosecuting attorney for over 30 years

alluro2 13d ago
It's a good example. If I hired a hitman to murder someone, and they broke into a private property and stole something so that they can action the murder (which I didn't know about or pay them to do), I would be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, but not for the theft part. Likely because that person is a human, is aware of societal and legal norms, and is responsible for their actions due to their participation in human society. (I am not a lawyer (if it wasn't painfully obvious so far) so in layman terms, I hope good definitions for all of this exist formally) AI is not a person - it cannot easily discern between "right" and "wrong" in non-strictly-defined sense, and is not subject to human norms and responsibility. So if I use AI to achieve goal A, either I, or the maker of AI, are fully responsible for anything that happens while AI is trying to achieve the goal given by me. Now, here, "I" in the example is OpenAI, who is simultaneously the maker of the AI. So it seems pretty obvious who is the only entity that can be responsible.
- schrodinger 13d ago
  I fully agree with you, but would go one step further: I think it's clear that we need to pierce the corporate veil and ascribe responsibility to _people_, not just "OpenAI the entity", full stop. Executives should fear being perp-walked and thrown in jail for the actions of irresponsible "tests" of their models in the real world, as they're ultimately accountable. Sure, there's a lot of nuance to work out, but I think we could likely even _start_ there today even with existing laws and pretty quickly "align" on more intricate legal frameworks to handle true accidents, distribution of responsibility, etc.

alpinisme 13d ago

The objection is not too far from criticisms of the use of passive voice: a man was injured at the factory vs a faulty saw blade snapped and injured a man vs after the company loosened safety inspection policies, etc. Which way you say it shifts the framing. And it’s not that one is less accurate to the facts, necessarily. It just is that one less aptly captures the moral and political relevance of the scenario. For my part, I think it makes good sense to anthropomorphize in some contexts and not others. Generally when responsibility is at issue, you probably want the framing that tunes anthropomorphism down to near zero, since it’s the human dimension you care about.

jmcgough 13d ago

I think the danger of anthropomorphizing is that 99% of people lack the technical background to understand the nuance. People have been primed by pop culture depictions of AI to think of LLMs as intelligent, autonomous beings, which leads to dangerous assumptions. We should make the distinction between them, because openai and anthropic will not. A magical black box that does the thinking for you is a much more compelling sales pitch.