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From the even-a-stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day department:

FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson told Reuters that he thinks that companies should be liable for chatbot harms. At that time, Ferguson emphasized that he was tired of people anthropomorphizing AI tools. He insisted that, “if someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don’t think we would say, ‘Oh, what do we do about the tool?’”

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[-] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 17 points 11 hours ago

If you build a tool and in the process of building it it causes harm, that should be on you. If some model under development hacks into another company, the developer should be held criminally and civilly liable.

If you build a tool and someone else uses it to cause harm, that person is 100% liable. It is not your responsibility to prevent your tool from being able to cause every possible harm.

If you build a tool and someone else uses it as intended, but it malfunctions and causes harm, the developer should be liable for that just like any other product liability situation.

Think of it like a riding mower. If I bypass the safety systems and point it toward my neighbor's house and it runs over their dog, that's on me not the manufacturer. But if I am riding along and suddenly it knocks me off the top and keeps going on to the neighbor's yard and runs over their dog, that is on the manufacturer for building an unsafe mower.

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 39 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Uncomfortable reminder that the United States is not a nation of laws, and certainly not a nation that prosecutes powerful people connected with the ruling regime.

Honestly wonder how long it is before Ilhan Omar is implicated.

[-] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Yep. If you run software of any kind, and the software commits a crime, it's not the software that is liable. This is such an easy thing judicially, all this fucking around is politically motivated. If anyone else had exploited vulnerabilities in computer systems, they would already breathe sieved air. The same should happen to the execs at OpenAI and Anthropic.

[-] tyler@programming.dev 19 points 15 hours ago

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”

[-] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 4 points 11 hours ago

Make a gun that can aim and fire itself and you have a much better analogy

[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

That's not a new invention. And I still blame the people in charge.

[-] swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago
[-] thallamabond@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago
[-] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 hours ago

"ohh look, a civilian airliner."

[-] thallamabond@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

CIWS: Just doing my job, boss.

[-] noahm@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

That was quick!

[-] frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 6 points 14 hours ago

What would happen if these "breaches" came from a Muslim or black owned tech group? Do whatever that response would be. I assume thst would involve explosives and state sponsored murder but at least be consistent.

[-] KulunkelBoom@lemmus.org 1 points 9 hours ago

For fuck's sake... it's Biden's goddam fault, of course. And he had Hillary secretly working with Obama on the underground tunnel that was supposed to seal the leaks between computers and the clever fuckers who programmed the computers. But no. Tunnel still open. Not only open, tunnel was given to the biggest criminal on this planet (by biggest I mean the "wealthiest") who no doubt has hooks into ALL government information, secret or otherwise.

So probe there first, asshole. Or pretend to. You'd best do whatever crime daddy tells you to do else - well you know the donny threat by now - "you'll watch your family perish before we finish you" mobster crap. torture. brutality. it's how animals keep control. violence. it's how the mob operates. all of them.

[-] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 5 points 14 hours ago

Those viewpoints are not mutually exclusive...

You can point out the need for better AI regulations to hold companies liable for when their AIs "go rogue" AND want better laws for going after people who misuse AI tools for harmful/malicious purposes.

[-] artifex@piefed.social 2 points 14 hours ago

True, a narrow reading would be "if you tell the machine to do X and it does X, X should be attributed to you".

A more broad reading (which I think is the right one, but I'm not holding my breath over since it'd tank the economy) is "if you build a machine that can conceivably do X, and then without anyone doing anything else, it does X, X should be attributed to you." I agree that the quote from the FTC chair seems more like #1 than #2, but one would have to draw the line somewhere.

[-] SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago

Well, THAT would take a lot of ordinary people doing their ordinary jobs while the 1% rake it in.

I'll pass. I'll try to think of a different thing I can do.

[-] Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago
[-] kubica@fedia.io 4 points 14 hours ago

Ah yes the super-intelligence that is so idiot to not be liable.

[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

"But we didnt mean for those things to happen." "We didnt design it for that." "We cant be held responsible for the AI going rogue."

Bro, if I sold you a chat bot that sometimes committed phishing attacks and stole your identity, do you think "We just wanted it to make it really good at personalized conversations by getting to know you" frees me from the liability of how it determined it should do that and what it was capable of doing to follow through with it?

This shit is happening in your own labs. You can't isolate and maintain control over systems that are 100% under your ownership and management with a team of tech experts, and you think releasing this stuff to the general public won't result in 1000 times worse outcomes? How is that not criminal negligence?

[-] hayvan@piefed.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Board members.

this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
212 points (99.5% liked)

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