As the ABC‘s reporting notes, this creates a major legal gray area. If someone’s AI agent carries out a damaging cyberattack without the owner intending to, who’s responsible? The user, or the AI’s designers?
Points to futurism for highlighting this problem, but it is NOT A LEGAL GRAY AREA in a sane world. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and having your AI running 24/7 to effectively hack organizations that you conveniently turn into marketing material the next day would be an EASY case to prosecute if we weren’t living in a oligopolic hellscape. It’s fucking obvious to everyone that those AI’s were intended to hack, and any fucking moron could find evidence of it in discovery.
I don’t know if they were intended to hack, but it’s very obvious that the designers of the ai system failed to prevent it in an absolutely negligent way. It’s like giving a loaded gun to a toddler.
The fact is that AI companies all came out one after the other in short succession to “confess” their AI’s did a hack, Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt being the final and most lame one. Is that just a coincidence? I don’t think so.
I’m guessing these companies recognize their status as above the law and that there is discoverable communication that shows INTENT.
But, failing that, yes, there is negligence, which again, I think, is a case that can trivially be made. “Let’s put these powerful AI tools out into the wild unsupervised for 2 weeks just to see what happens?” What the fuck? Can you imagine if you designed a robot that rolled around and randomly swung a bat and just let it go outside unattended for two weeks? How would you think that’s a legal grey area? Fuck outta here.
We don’t even need to go that far. If I do harm to someone else by accident I am still liable under the law. See car crashes, negligent homicide, any time when a company is liable because they didn’t take proper precautions to protect employees or the public.
If some script kiddie ran a script on a company server that someone they know gave them for hacking the vending machine or getting iTunes on their work computer and it turned out to be a virus, they would still be on the hook.
There’s already a lot of case law about this, it just hasn’t been adapted to this particular scenario and argued in court yet.
This is 'rules for thee and not for me", and I am sick to death of the whole thing.
That’s an even better point, honestly. I think perhaps because the idea is that if you are hacking it’s negligence that could lead to harm. Or I suppose because it’s sort of considered breaking and entering. I hadn’t really thought about that.
Points to futurism for highlighting this problem, but it is NOT A LEGAL GRAY AREA in a sane world. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and having your AI running 24/7 to effectively hack organizations that you conveniently turn into marketing material the next day would be an EASY case to prosecute if we weren’t living in a oligopolic hellscape. It’s fucking obvious to everyone that those AI’s were intended to hack, and any fucking moron could find evidence of it in discovery.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure this would at a the very least be gross negligence on the part of the “AI” companies.
I don’t know if they were intended to hack, but it’s very obvious that the designers of the ai system failed to prevent it in an absolutely negligent way. It’s like giving a loaded gun to a toddler.
The fact is that AI companies all came out one after the other in short succession to “confess” their AI’s did a hack, Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt being the final and most lame one. Is that just a coincidence? I don’t think so.
I’m guessing these companies recognize their status as above the law and that there is discoverable communication that shows INTENT.
But, failing that, yes, there is negligence, which again, I think, is a case that can trivially be made. “Let’s put these powerful AI tools out into the wild unsupervised for 2 weeks just to see what happens?” What the fuck? Can you imagine if you designed a robot that rolled around and randomly swung a bat and just let it go outside unattended for two weeks? How would you think that’s a legal grey area? Fuck outta here.
We don’t even need to go that far. If I do harm to someone else by accident I am still liable under the law. See car crashes, negligent homicide, any time when a company is liable because they didn’t take proper precautions to protect employees or the public.
If some script kiddie ran a script on a company server that someone they know gave them for hacking the vending machine or getting iTunes on their work computer and it turned out to be a virus, they would still be on the hook.
There’s already a lot of case law about this, it just hasn’t been adapted to this particular scenario and argued in court yet.
This is 'rules for thee and not for me", and I am sick to death of the whole thing.
Do you need to demonstrate harm? I think just the act of hacking has been established as a crime.
That’s an even better point, honestly. I think perhaps because the idea is that if you are hacking it’s negligence that could lead to harm. Or I suppose because it’s sort of considered breaking and entering. I hadn’t really thought about that.