Executive summary: The AI safety community should reconsider its embrace of strict liability for AI harms because it has significant flaws and is unlikely to gain traction, and should instead focus on defining specific duties and faults that would trigger liability.
Key points:
Strict criminal liability is inappropriate for AI harms, while strict civil liability is unfair to developers taking safety precautions and unlikely to deter AI development.
Analogies used to justify strict liability for AI, such as abnormally dangerous activities, are flawed due to differences in risk materialization, consensus, and societal benefits.
Strict liability proposals have a low chance of success due to economic and national security pressures and lack of expert consensus on AI risk levels.
The AI safety community should focus on defining specific duties and faults to trigger liability, as this approach is more likely to succeed and achieve safety goals.
A fault-based liability system with a reverse burden of proof is recommended for cases where clear malicious intent cannot be proven.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The AI safety community should reconsider its embrace of strict liability for AI harms because it has significant flaws and is unlikely to gain traction, and should instead focus on defining specific duties and faults that would trigger liability.
Key points:
Strict criminal liability is inappropriate for AI harms, while strict civil liability is unfair to developers taking safety precautions and unlikely to deter AI development.
Analogies used to justify strict liability for AI, such as abnormally dangerous activities, are flawed due to differences in risk materialization, consensus, and societal benefits.
Strict liability proposals have a low chance of success due to economic and national security pressures and lack of expert consensus on AI risk levels.
The AI safety community should focus on defining specific duties and faults to trigger liability, as this approach is more likely to succeed and achieve safety goals.
A fault-based liability system with a reverse burden of proof is recommended for cases where clear malicious intent cannot be proven.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.