In the previous post, I explained how punitive damages could “pull forward” the expected liability associated with the uninsurable risks generated by training and deploying advanced AI systems. In this post, I lay out the details of my proposed punitive damages calculation, and suggest opportunities for technical AI safety researchers...
Epistemic status: This is a summary of an 80-page law review article that took me ~6 months to research and write. I am highly confident about my characterization of existing U.S. tort law and its limits. This characterization is only contested by other legal scholars and analysts on the margin....
This year's Spring ACX Meetup everywhere in Massapequa.
Location: 47 Clinton Pl., Massapequa, NY 17758 (backyard) – https://plus.codes/87G8MG4F+4X
Please RSVP via email to gabeaweil at gmail
Contact: gabeaweil@gmail.com
All are welcome.
Location: 47 Clinton Pl., Massapequa NY, 11758 – https://plus.codes/87G8MG4F+3W
Please RSVP via email so I know how much food to get.
Contact: gabeaweil@gmail.com
"I think joint & several liability regimes will resolve this. In the sense that, it's not 100% the companies fault; it'll be shared by the programmers, the operator, and the company."
J&S doesn't do much good if the harm is practically non-compensable because no one is alive to sue or be sued, or the legal system is no longer functioning. Even for harms that are merely financially uninsurable, in only enlarges the maximum practically compensable harm by less than an order of magnitude.
"Yes. Here I ask: what about legal systems that use delictual law instead of tort law? The names, requirements and such are different. In other words, you'll get completely different legal... (read more)
In the previous post, I explained how punitive damages could “pull forward” the expected liability associated with the uninsurable risks generated by training and deploying advanced AI systems. In this post, I lay out the details of my proposed punitive damages calculation, and suggest opportunities for technical AI safety researchers to lay the groundwork for implementing this proposal.
The goal of my proposed punitive damages framework is for the creators and deployers of AI systems to expect to pay out damages roughly equal to the amount of harm they expect to cause. Since the law cannot hold them liable in cases where uninsurable risks are realized, this is accomplished by applying punitive damages... (read 1085 more words →)
Location: 47 Clinton Pl., Massapequa NY, 11758 – https://plus.codes/87G8MG4F+3W
Please RSVP via email so I know how much food to get.
Contact: gabeaweil@gmail.com
The idea with my framework is punitive damages would only be available to the extent that the most cost-effective risk mitigation measures that the AI system developer/deployer could have to taken to further reduce to likelihood and/or severity of the practically compensable harm would also tend to mitigate the uninsurable risk. I agree that there's a potential Goodhart problem here, which the prospect of liability could give AI companies strong incentives to eliminate warning shots, without doing very much to mitigate the catastrophic risk. For this reason, I think it's really important that the punitive damages formula put heavy weight on the elasticity of the particular practically compensable harm at issue with the associated uninsurable risk.
The version of your concern that I endorse is that this framework wouldn't work very well in worlds where warning shots are (or, more to the point, expected to be rare by the key decision-makers). It can deter large incidents, but only those that are associated with small incidents that are more likely. If the threat models you're most worried about are unlikely to produce such near-misses, then the expectation of liability is unlikely to be a sufficient deterrent. It's not clear to me that there are politically viable policies that would significantly mitigate those kinds of risks, but I plan to address that question more deeply in future work.
Epistemic status: This is a summary of an 80-page law review article that took me ~6 months to research and write. I am highly confident about my characterization of existing U.S. tort law and its limits. This characterization is only contested by other legal scholars and analysts on the margin. My prescriptions are much more controversial, though most of the objections come from people who are skeptical of AI catastrophic risk and/or the political viability of my proposals, rather than the merits (on the assumption that advanced AI systems do generate catastrophic risks).
TLDR: Legal liability could substantially mitigate AI risk, but current law falls short in two key ways: (1) it requires... (read 1345 more words →)
I have covid and need to cancel this event (which was scheduled to take place in my home). Sorry!