FTC Chair: AI Developers Should Be Liable When Their Agents Cause Harm
FTC chair suggests AI developers should be liable for conduct of agents
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson pushed back on treating AI agents as autonomous actors with "wills and desires of their own," arguing that the developers who instruct them should bear liability for harm. Speaking at Reuters Momentum AI Austin, he said existing legal tools, including the agency's authority over undisclosed data breaches, can apply to AI developers. The FTC is also preparing a market study on personalized pricing and seeking input on a rule to curb fraudulent ads.
If someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don't think we would say, 'Oh, what do we do about the tool?'
- janalsncm
Going beyond the headline there are three things in this article:
1) FTC chairman says AI agents will be treated just like any other tool (“resist anthropomorphizing”)
2) Studying enforcement of rules around personalized (“surveillance”) pricing, specifically rideshare, airplanes and food delivery
3) Public comment period open now on new rule to punish companies like Meta and Google that advertise scams.
The last one seems closest to happening but it’s still just a public comment period so it might die.
- etchalon
Yes. Duh.
- verdverm
Rule 3, humans remain responsible
https://susam.net/inverse-laws-of-robotics.html
> Humans must remain fully responsible for decisions involving AI and accountable for the consequences arising from its use. If a negative outcome occurs as a result of following AI-generated advice or decisions, it is not sufficient to say, 'the AI told us to do it'. AI systems do not choose goals, deploy themselves or bear the costs of failure. Humans and organisations do. An AI system is a tool and like any other tool, responsibility for its use rests with the people who decide to rely on it.