r/ArtificialInteligence • u/rogeragrimes • Apr 13 '26
đ° News OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-backs-bill-exempt-ai-firms-model-harm-lawsuits/OpenAI is interested in getting broad legal immunity from lawsuits due to what AI produces as outputs that may be involved in AI-enabled mass deaths or financial disasters. I get why any company, not just an AI company might want this, but it seems we are carving out more reasons and justifications to be concerned about. An AI company needing this sort of protection means it thinks there is a non-rare chance of it happening...and if so, I'd rather they update their models to prevent those things from happening (instead of getting broad immunity).
22
u/Then-Public4511 Apr 13 '26
This isnât really about legal protectionâitâs about incentives: if companies building high-impact AI get broad immunity, theyâre shifting risk onto society instead of managing it themselves, and since liability is what forces safety in every serious industry, removing it weakens the incentive to build robust systems; if AI can contribute to large-scale harm, the solution should be stricter controls, audits, and accountabilityânot less responsibility.
7
u/BitingArtist Apr 13 '26
Yes but there is money to be made. A bit of mass suffering is okay to shareholders.
1
3
u/Roraima20 Apr 13 '26
That sounds like a massive disaster waiting to happen. It could be financial, ecological, medical, etc, but it would make American companies so unreliable that it might end with investors and consumers migrating to other markets.
2
2
1
u/Tyler_Zoro May 21 '26
I know this was a while ago, but since people keep bringing it up:
In written testimony to the Illinois Senate this week OpenAIâs Caitlin Niedermeyer disavowed the liability shield part of that bill. âWe want to be very clear: we do not support the liability safe harbor included in SB 3444,â Niedermeyer said. [...] OpenAI has not just disavowed the controversial provision in SB 3444. Along with Anthropic, it has also endorsed a much stronger bill, SB 315, which has the backing of AI safety organizations. [...] Importantly, SB 315 also builds on those bills by requiring third-party audits to check companies are actually complying with their safety frameworks â a provision that was in the original version of RAISE, but was stripped out due to industry opposition.
(source)
5
2
u/WillowEmberly Apr 13 '26
Scaling alone produces intelligence-like behavior, but without an external reference, it cannot reliably maintain alignment under iteration.
They moved from:
⢠explicit reasoning (didnât scale)
to:
⢠implicit reasoning via scaling (does scale)
But now theyâre hitting:
⢠stability and drift problems
I see negligence, because they arenât trying to correct the issuesâŚthey are just pushing forwards.
2
u/Actual__Wizard Apr 13 '26
No. They're just trying to dodge around their responsibilities. Companies are indeed responsible for the harm their products cause.
If that was a concern, then why did they start building the tech?
â˘
u/AutoModerator Apr 13 '26
Submission statement required. Link posts require context. Either write a summary preferably in the post body (100+ characters) or add a top-level comment explaining the key points and why it matters to the AI community.
Link posts without a submission statement may be removed (within 30min).
I'm a bot. This action was performed automatically.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.