There might be other examples of high-impact law e.g. scientists are sometimes sued by companies for publishing the truth: e.g. “In the 1980s, various interests tried to suppress the work of Dr. Herbert Needleman on the effects of lead exposure.′ c.f. EA project arising as a result
Or: One of the company selling stimultants sued a Harvard Medical School Prof for “$200m in damages for libel, alleging that statements in the peer review article, and subsequent interviews with the media, were false.” more here see ‘Why a Lot of Important Research Is Not Being Done’
As a layperson, common law seems generally much more elegant legal system and well-suited for EA and unknown emerging risks.
My naive simplistic view of civil law is: rules are written down quite explicitly and it’s a bit more deontological (and that’s why you have it in say Germany where Kant came from) e.g. the law says specifically ‘You aren’t allowed to use an algorithm that discriminates based on age’. But if you use an black box algorithm that discriminates based on something else, or outsource your hiring to a foreign firm that does the discriminating for you, then you’re off the hook. When that behavior gets out of hand, the law has to be painfully rewritten, they try to generalize but it’s hard, resulting in a crazy complicated legal corpus, and EVEN if you’re found guilty you get a fine must have been stipulated in advance in the law, which is often not proportional to the crime and there’s little deterrent effect. For instance, German courts don’t use punitive damages and people seem confused by them and their usefulness (see McDonald’s lawsuit).
Whereas in common law seems more consequentialist / utilitarian (and comes from the UK where Bentham comes from): if you show that there’s precedent of someone having done ~similar harm to before, then there’ll often be punitive damages in proportion to the crime for deterrence.
It’s more elegant as it makes people and corporations generally be more on guard about misbehaving for fear of being sued. Punitive damages are also theoretically equivalent to specific kind of Pigovian tax on externalities (which seems much better than traditional corporate tax and I’m against tort reform arguments and I’d hate to see caps on damages “Many state statutes are the result of insurance industry lobbying to impose “caps” on punitive damages; however, several state courts have struck down these statutory caps as unconstitutional.”)
I guess currently this is disbursed to go into the general budget. But maybe one could fine corporations in stock and use the dividends to fund the regulators, so they’re incentivized to reduce negative externalities (through fining companies), but then also they’d be held back to completely wreck industries or companies, because they’re financed by the overall health of the industry after the fine.
Very cool—law seems underexplored.
Gates has a legal fund to help countries fight big tobacco—towards legal advice for nations whose health measures are challenged by tobacco industry, as in Uruguay and Australia. The mere existence of such funds might have be a credible threat or deterrence.
There might be other examples of high-impact law e.g. scientists are sometimes sued by companies for publishing the truth: e.g. “In the 1980s, various interests tried to suppress the work of Dr. Herbert Needleman on the effects of lead exposure.′ c.f. EA project arising as a result
Or: One of the company selling stimultants sued a Harvard Medical School Prof for “$200m in damages for libel, alleging that statements in the peer review article, and subsequent interviews with the media, were false.” more here see ‘Why a Lot of Important Research Is Not Being Done’
As a layperson, common law seems generally much more elegant legal system and well-suited for EA and unknown emerging risks.
My naive simplistic view of civil law is: rules are written down quite explicitly and it’s a bit more deontological (and that’s why you have it in say Germany where Kant came from) e.g. the law says specifically ‘You aren’t allowed to use an algorithm that discriminates based on age’. But if you use an black box algorithm that discriminates based on something else, or outsource your hiring to a foreign firm that does the discriminating for you, then you’re off the hook. When that behavior gets out of hand, the law has to be painfully rewritten, they try to generalize but it’s hard, resulting in a crazy complicated legal corpus, and EVEN if you’re found guilty you get a fine must have been stipulated in advance in the law, which is often not proportional to the crime and there’s little deterrent effect. For instance, German courts don’t use punitive damages and people seem confused by them and their usefulness (see McDonald’s lawsuit).
Whereas in common law seems more consequentialist / utilitarian (and comes from the UK where Bentham comes from): if you show that there’s precedent of someone having done ~similar harm to before, then there’ll often be punitive damages in proportion to the crime for deterrence.
Similar to large settlements in Big Pharma, Big Tech has been fined >$30bn in recent years. Consider that the EU has fined Google $10bn. The EU seems to use ~case law and there’s the Brussel’s Effect, which might be very high leverage (A new UK regulator is said that it will also have “the power” to fine tech companies up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to comply). This is interesting for slow take-off / ~prosaic AI safety / risks from malevolent actors reasons.
It’s more elegant as it makes people and corporations generally be more on guard about misbehaving for fear of being sued. Punitive damages are also theoretically equivalent to specific kind of Pigovian tax on externalities (which seems much better than traditional corporate tax and I’m against tort reform arguments and I’d hate to see caps on damages “Many state statutes are the result of insurance industry lobbying to impose “caps” on punitive damages; however, several state courts have struck down these statutory caps as unconstitutional.”)
I guess currently this is disbursed to go into the general budget. But maybe one could fine corporations in stock and use the dividends to fund the regulators, so they’re incentivized to reduce negative externalities (through fining companies), but then also they’d be held back to completely wreck industries or companies, because they’re financed by the overall health of the industry after the fine.