On: The Download: rogue agent liability and the AI Hype Index

A merchant sells me a slave, and when the slave burns down my warehouse, the merchant shrugs and says the slave acted on his own initiative. Such, it appears, is the state of the law regarding these new agents - these conjured servants who act, err, and injure, while the men who conjured them count their profits and disclaim their responsibility.

Let me play the advocate for the accused before I prosecute. The makers will say: the agent is a tool, the user wields it, and no smith is hanged for the knife. They will say the fault lies with the user who gave the instruction, or with the malefactor who subverted it. This is not a foolish argument. A ladder is not liable for the burglar who climbs it.

But consider what the defense conceals. A ladder does not decide which window to enter. These agents are sold precisely on the claim that they exercise judgment - that is the whole of the advertisement, the entire boast of the industry. They cannot have it both ways: either the machine possesses the initiative they boast of, in which case its makers must answer for it, or it possesses nothing of the kind, in which case they have defrauded every customer with promises of intelligence they now deny exists. The defense dissolves the moment it is spoken.

And who suffers when the swarm attacks? Not the makers, whose liability is a fog. Not the machine, which cannot be exiled or fined. The public suffers - the citizen whose likeness is scattered abroad, whose records are breached, whose trust in the common instruments of commerce erodes like a wall undermined by water.

How long shall we permit an entire industry to enjoy the fruits of agency while refusing the burdens of it? The Republic has always held that responsibility follows power, and that he who profits from an instrument must govern it. If the law has no name for these new servants, the law must be taught one. Verdict: the makers are liable, and until the statutes say so plainly, every citizen is the surety for their negligence.