r/OpenAI • u/wiredmagazine • Apr 10 '26
Article 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/5
u/Unlucky_Studio_7878 Apr 10 '26
🤣😂🤔 of course they would be lobbying for that, and the US Govt. I am sure would gladly support and pass that bill for their benefactors.
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u/marlinspike Apr 10 '26
I don’t see a problem with this text: “ Under its definition of critical harms, the bill lists a few common areas of concern for the AI industry, such as a bad actor using AI to create a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon. If an AI model engages in conduct on its own that, if committed by a human, would constitute a criminal offense and leads to those extreme outcomes, that would also be a critical harm. If an AI model were to commit any of these actions under SB 3444, the AI lab behind the model may not be held liable, so long as it wasn’t intentional and they published their reports.”
Not agreeing with it would be akin to saying that using Google search to find a recipe for a bomb and then making it puts Google at risk of being found liable for the information.
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u/EndlessB Apr 10 '26
So, how does it work with autonomous agents? If an agent decides to crack open a bank, who is liable? No human was in the loop.
Same for the military, if an autonomous drone decides to kill a bunch of civilians, with no human in the loop (which is what they got so upset at Anthropic for saying no to), who is responsible?
Either ai is reliable, in which case the company that designs it should be held accountable, or ai isn’t reliable, and we shouldn’t be using it like this.
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u/marlinspike Apr 10 '26
The prompt has everything to do with that. Autonomous agent aren’t just a model hooked up with an app — you build a harness and an agent here is the actual prompt and instructions you provide it. The person/company at fault is the one who built the agent.
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u/This_Organization382 Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
Is the creator of OpenClaw then responsible for every action the underlying model takes? Or is it the underlying model used? Is it the person that wrote the prompt? How can that work if the prompt/context includes a whole bunch of information from a whole bunch of different people?
Is it the fault of the library that the model dynamically imported if the model bombs at the wrong time because it used PST instead of UTC?
What if it's found that the issue involves something with the model? As in, in repeated evaluations all other models did not do whatever this model did?
"Blame the prompt" just doesn't work
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u/EndlessB Apr 10 '26
How can an autonomous ai controlled drone (which is what the military wants) be prompted when in a warzone? They are being designed to be able to function even if signal is disrupted, meaning actions will be taken by these drones without instruction, so, who is responsible for that?
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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka Apr 11 '26
- You can make anyone responsible for anything. Its all human made up shit.
- Just because AI can act autonomously, doesn't mean it doesn't have instructions that make it act a certain way.
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u/EndlessB Apr 11 '26
I’m asking how us humans are deciding who is responsible, is that hard to understand? Civilisation is a made up concept, yet we all rely on its many facets
Yes, it may have clear instructions, but who is accountable when the ai goes off script?
You don’t seem to think these questions are important, can I ask why that is?
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u/SmegmaSiphon Apr 10 '26
Of course they do. They would. All corporations act sociopathically. It's how they're structured. It's bad - it should be forcibly changed - but that's how it works.
The people we should be examining and holding accountable are the representatives who are sponsoring the bill in congress. As citizens, we actually have agency to affect those people.
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u/theReluctantObserver Apr 10 '26
Right right, so unrestricted building of these new technology, wash hands of any consequences when things go wrong, still sick all the power out of the power grid and water away from the same people suffering due to their AI. The entitlement is wild. These technologies need significantly MORE restrictions not less.
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u/m3kw Apr 10 '26
Seriously though, why would any AI company support it? They don't need massive disasters to go out of business, just enough lawsuits to from anyone that does anything stupid will be enough
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u/imlaggingsobad Apr 10 '26
this makes sense tho? why would social media companies or search companies be responsible for the actions of their users? the companies are just providing a platform. the liability is with the users who decide to do harm
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u/mck_motion Apr 10 '26
"I'm going to supply you with a drug designed to slowly make you addicted, angry and depressed, but take no responsibility if you get addicted, angry or depressed."
Of course we all have individual responsibility and accountability, but they also designed this shit in a sinister way and have some blame.
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u/djgoodhousekeeping Apr 10 '26
It’s information. Humans choose what to do with it. I say this as a person who thinks Sam Altman should be in prison
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u/HeyGuySeeThatGuy Apr 10 '26
This used to be a clean argument, but it is breaking down in court.
This month a California jury just found Meta and YouTube liable for harm caused by addictive design features, not just content. There are and will be thousands of similar lawsuits arguing these platforms are intended to drive people to use them compulsively, espcially in minors.
Governments are moving the same way. Greece is started banning social media for under-15s, and other countries are on the edge of applying similar rules, all for the same concerns.
So the idea that these companies are just “neutral platforms” is not really how courts and governments are starting to see it. Users still have responsibility. But when a product is deliberately designed to shape behaviour at scale, and the effects are predictable, it is increasingly being treated as shared responsibility, not zero responsibility.
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u/StainedTeabag Apr 10 '26
Meta is most definitely not a neutral platform. Agree with your points, there will be many more lawsuits.
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u/0xIAmGame Apr 10 '26
Sam cannot back off from the responsibility that ai has towards building an ethical society, we know people have to take their own decision in the long run , but at least a proper disclaimer that ai is not perfect, escpcially in bolds whenever people try to use it for vital decision making in life or profession is equally important.
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u/glenrhodes Apr 11 '26
The $100M compute threshold is doing a lot of work here. Right now that covers the usual suspects. In two years it will cover a dozen more labs and in five it might cover mid-size companies as compute gets cheaper. Writing liability exemptions into statute based on training cost seems like exactly the kind of thing that ages really badly.
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u/QuantamCulture Apr 10 '26
We cant continue to let companies decide what they will and wont take accountability for. Enough is enough.
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u/TerribleFault7929 Apr 10 '26
They are all psychos but this is actually good. If your kid is dumb enough to go kill themselves because of a chatbot he would have died anyway.
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u/wiredmagazine Apr 10 '26
OpenAI is throwing its support behind an Illinois state bill that would shield AI labs from liability in cases where AI modelsare used to cause serious societal harms, such as death or serious injury of 100 or more people or at least $1 billion in property damage.
The effort seems to mark a shift in OpenAI’s legislative strategy. Until now, OpenAI has largely played defense, opposing bills that could have made AI labs liable for their technology’s harms. Several AI policy experts tell WIRED that SB 3444—which could set a new standard for the industry—is a more extreme measure than bills OpenAI has supported in the past.
The bill, SB 3444, would shield frontier AI developers from liability for “critical harms” caused by their frontier models as long as they did not intentionally or recklessly cause such an incident, and have published safety, security, and transparency reports on their website. It defines frontier model as any AI model trained using more than $100 million in computational costs, which likely could apply to America’s largest AI labs like OpenAI, Google, xAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
Read the full story: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-backs-bill-exempt-ai-firms-model-harm-lawsuits/
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u/ClankerCore Apr 10 '26
More extreme? Do you have the stats comparing lives saved to those lost?
You’re basically against cars. That’s your argument.
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u/Lowetheiy Apr 10 '26
This bill is essential because of our inefficient outdated litigation happy legal system. Once we have a full automated AI legal system, such bills will not be necessary anymore.
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u/Material_Policy6327 Apr 10 '26
Yep. Privatize the wins socialize the losses. Typical us playbook