this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2026
365 points (100.0% liked)

Programming

28628 readers
135 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52426446

US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said on Friday he would resist describing AI agents as ​autonomous actors that "break loose" with "wills and desires of their own," suggesting the developers who instruct agents would be the ones liable ‌for harm.

"I'm going to continue as long as I am chairman to resist this anthropomorphizing of these tools," Ferguson said at the Reuters Momentum AI Austin event. "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?'"

Ferguson's remarks illustrated potential avenues for the Trump administration to take ​as incidents rise in which agentic AI testing resulted in unauthorized access to corporate or government data.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (9 children)

Just for comprehension... Who exactly should be liable?

Companies which build "ai" models (LLMs)?

Companies which use them?

Software developers?

Evil black hats with bad intentions?

[–] Jaysyn@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Make the CEO 100% criminally liable for company agents & all of this bullshit will stop immediately.

[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago

That's a good list to start with, we can add to it as needed.

Remember when you're not a billionaire, there are things called "conspiracy charges", all these people would be roped in already if this were any other kind of crime.

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 54 points 3 days ago

All of the above? ✅

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 28 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)
  1. Yes, they built them and knew the possible consequences.
  2. Yes, they bought tokens for them and now certainly know the potential consequences.
  3. Not if they as employees were ordered by their bosses (see 1. and 2.) to use it or face firing (unless whistleblower protections become an actual thing again, which they aren't these days -- then employees woudl be expected to blow the whistle).
  4. Yes, if we can find out who they were.
[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Same as with any tool. If your boss orders you to use some power tool that you arent qualified to use and this causes an injury or death then your boss should be held responsible, if you decided to do it on your own, then you should be held responsible, if it turns out the tool had a critical manufacturing defect which caused this incident, then sometimes the manufacturer needs to be held responsible. Not really a new concept.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

Easy.

Replace "manager" with "prompter" and "employee" with "LLM".

The manager told the employee to do something.

Afterwards, something bad happened.

Did the employee do what the manager told it to do. And the bad situation is a consequence of following those instructions? Yes -> manager's fault. No -> employee's fault.

Did the employee do something illegal (or against some other rule)? Yes -> employees fault

The thing requested was illegal to request (or against some other rule)? Yes -> Manager's fault

Note that more than one thing can be true at the same time. So even if the employee does whatever the manager told it to do. If that thing was illegal to do, both of them are at fault.

If it's the "manager"'s fault -> the prompter is liable

If it's the "employee"'s fault -> the LLM company is liable.

Easy as that. It works like any other situation.

If any machine has been properly maintained and malfunctions, the maker of that machine is liable. If the operator was using a chainsaw to cut through concrete and the chainsaw malfunctions the operator (and whoever (if anyone) ordered the operator to do that) is liable.

[–] shawarma@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago

The operator should ultimately be responsible for the output and actions taken by the system.

[–] banter6888@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

FTC chairman's comments sound reasonable on the surface, but just vague enough to be meaningless.

It sounds to me like the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but a first draft attempt to put AI issues away from the tool. Then, his definition of 'developer' is unclear.

With guns the argument is more straightforward, the tool is made to send projectiles in one direction when a user pulls the trigger.

With AI, does the end user know what the tool is capable of doing to achieve their goal when they direct it to do something?

[–] werty@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 days ago

No, they don't know precisely what the tool will do, it's unpredictable, but they do know it's capable of dangerous shenanigans, they do know that they don't have oversight or control of all it's actions. They know it's risky to use so they should take at least some responsibility.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

All of them. there's enough liability to go around, if people want to fuck around with this garbage they can be responsible when it goes off the rails.

put enough people in prison for this and the message will be received to the rest.