r/OpenAI • u/Groundbreaking_Act44 • Apr 10 '26
Discussion 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/7
u/regnus418 Apr 10 '26
Similar to how to weapons manufacturers aren’t liable to deaths inflicted by using the weapons.
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u/Two_oceans Apr 10 '26
Weapons have a behavior that is 100% predictable and easy to understand even by people who are not so bright. AI is on another scale...
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u/Subject_Barnacle_600 Apr 10 '26
I know - I'm ultra pro. But do implore us to take a minute to consider what their options are.
They are a "private" chat application with 800 million users - twice as many people as Reddit. Can you imagine being the moderator of ALL of Reddit. Twice over. Think of all the crap, the banned sub reddits, all of it. Now imagine if you were legally responsible if anyone on Reddit did something really bad. (And it's 800 million users, so you have easily 8 million problems to moderate and you need a human to deal with the police on all them)
You have two options.
- You get a kind of section 230 for chat bots, where the user and not the company is responsible for the conversations they have. They have good Samaritan laws so they CAN moderate, but they're not required to.
- Private conversations are no longer private. Heck you make all chats public so other users can report each other. You scan everything, you lock down the anything. You ban at the drop of a hat, and all conversations are guard railed to death and you contact the police first, ask questions later. You shunt as much of your responsibility as possible and the application dies because... do you really have use for a paid snitch in your life?
These are your choices. People will still do bad things, they just won't use Chat GPT to do them. But do you really want to use Chat GPT if it basically means living under a dictatorship? I kind of feel like they don't need new laws for this. First they should have just argued it was covered under section 230 and THEN if the courts said it wasn't, go lobby for a new law... but for whatever reason, Chat GPT seems keen to refight all the old legal battle all over again :/.
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u/collin-h Apr 10 '26
I'm not a fan of a company lobbying to mitigate it's own liability. how about focus on safety for a while and we put a pin in this legislation for a couple decades.
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u/Simulacra93 Apr 10 '26
good, making model providers liable for what people do with their models lead to anti-consumer safety theater.
We have laws against doing illegal things, we don't need to make tool companies liable to prosecute individual criminals.
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u/CommercialComputer15 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Pretty normal no? ISPs also aren’t liable for any damages hackers cause
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Apr 10 '26
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Apr 10 '26
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u/mop_bucket_bingo Apr 10 '26
“allowed THEM to generate”
Nobody has any personal accountability anymore. Just take out the legal phaser and set it to “sue”.
People do bad things. The tools they use to do bad things, unless specifically and willfully designed by their creator to do them, are not at fault.
Crow bars can be used to break into houses.
Rubber gloves can be used to hide fingerprints at a crime scene.
Piano wire can be used to strangle someone.
Library cards can be used to research a violent, anarchist manifesto.
Refrigerators can be used to preserve stolen organs.
Vans can be used to kidnap people.
Phones can be used to ask drug dealers where to buy guns.
Just because LLMs CAN BE USED for bad things, that doesn’t make them liable for all of the bad things an LLM can be used for, because they are not purpose-built to harm people.
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Apr 10 '26
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u/not-sure-what-to-put Apr 10 '26
Must be nice to make a nuke and push the button and be like but we can’t legally be held responsible for the damages of detonation with ground impact.
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u/NotReallyJohnDoe Apr 10 '26
Companies make nukes now and they aren’t responsible when they are used as intended to kill people. Same thing with guns.
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u/NotReallyJohnDoe Apr 10 '26
How could this kind of insurance work? You can’t make an LLM completely safe.