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AI agents aren’t legally responsible for any harm that they cause, experts say. So who is?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
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Technology
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What if you bowl your ball normally down the lane and of its own initiative it goes and hacks a website?
In that case, society's to blame.
Really? I'm inclined to blame that on the manufacturer. If 'AI' guardrails fail that spectacularly, it's on the provider. I fail to see any way to blame society, other than perhaps not voting in more sanity, but that's pretty indirect.
Sigh. I really need to put /s around things.
It's a Monty Python quote.
Fair cop, probably should have got it. But rather out of context here without ascribing it.
As the person who deployed the agent, you are responsible for what it does on your behalf. You stand to gain from its actions, you also stand to lose from its bad behavior.
Of course, if the company that provided you the agent knowingly misrepresented the product, you can seek damages for what the agent did - but that's up to you (and good luck getting damages from trillion-dollar tech companies and their armies of lawyers).
How do you guardrail the machine that is programmed to literally make things up and/or tell you you're doing a great job while it does it?
IMO you likely can't, certainly hasn't even gotten close yet. Bodes badly for alignment of anything more general. Kind of makes it irresponsible to advocate (and sell) using it on anything important, no?
It's 100% irresponsible. Especially given how many of then are going rogue.