OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters
hubie writes:
OpenAI is throwing its support behind an Illinois state bill that would shield AI labs from liability in cases where AI models are used to cause serious societal harms, such as death or serious injury of 100 or more people or at least $1 billion in property damage.
[...] The bill would shield frontier AI developers from liability for "critical harms" caused by their frontier models as long as they did not intentionally or recklessly cause such an incident, and have published safety, security, and transparency reports on their website. It defines a frontier model as any AI model trained using more than $100 million in computational costs, which likely could apply to America's largest AI labs, like OpenAI, Google, xAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
"We support approaches like this because they focus on what matters most: Reducing the risk of serious harm from the most advanced AI systems while still allowing this technology to get into the hands of the people and businesses-small and big-of Illinois," said OpenAI spokesperson Jamie Radice in an emailed statement. "They also help avoid a patchwork of state-by-state rules and move toward clearer, more consistent national standards."
Under its definition of critical harms, the bill lists a few common areas of concern for the AI industry, such as a bad actor using AI to create a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon. If an AI model engages in conduct on its own that, if committed by a human, would constitute a criminal offense and leads to those extreme outcomes, that would also be a critical harm. If an AI model were to commit any of these actions under SB 3444, the AI lab behind the model may not be held liable, so long as it wasn't intentional and they published their reports.
[...] "At OpenAI, we believe the North Star for frontier regulation should be the safe deployment of the most advanced models in a way that also preserves US leadership in innovation," Niedermeyer said.
Scott Wisor, policy director for the Secure AI project, tells WIRED he believes this bill has a slim chance of passing, given Illinois' reputation for aggressively regulating technology. "We polled people in Illinois, asking whether they think AI companies should be exempt from liability, and 90 percent of people oppose it. There's no reason existing AI companies should be facing reduced liability," Wisor says.
[...] Years into the AI boom, there's still an open legal question around what happens if an AI model causes a catastrophic event.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.