[miltonlost]

You fundamentally don’t understand either accountability or what people mean by “computers can’t be held accountable”. Who is at fault when a computer makes a mistake? That is accountability.

You cannot put a computer in jail. You cannot fine a computer. Please, stop torturing what people mean because you want AI to make decisions to absolve you of guilt.

[chgs]

What is the purpose of putting a person in jail or fining them?

Retribution? Reformation? Prevention?

[cmgriffing]

Consider the Volkswagen scandal where code was written that fudged the results when in an emissions testing environment.

The only person to see major punishment for that was the software dev that wrote the code, but that decision to write that code involved far more people up the chain. THEY should be held accountable in some way or else nothing prevents them from using some other poor dev as a scapegoat.

[gampleman]

So far. The trials are ongoing but it has cost a few CEOs their jobs which while not all that consequential isn’t nothing.

[cmgriffing]

Oh interesting. I hadn't heard much about it recently. Thanks.

[echoangle]

In this context, prevention. So people see what happens if they screw up in a negligent way and make sure to not do it themselves.

[chgs]

Wouldn’t an AI be able to be fixed to not break in the same way though, thus meeting the requirement?

[echoangle]

No, you don’t just want to fix the problem every time until no problems are left. You want to force people to think about what they’re going to do so that problems that can be anticipated aren’t made in the first place.

[willy_k]

All of the above. Whether or not one agrees with it, humans have a need for retribution, or as we prefer to call it to feel better about it, justice. And you cannot get retribution on LLMs.

[miltonlost]

Mixture of all three, but for the purposes of “accountability”, prevention of the behavior in the first place. But I don’t want to debate prisons when that’s derailing the larger point of “accountability in AI/computers”.

[9rx]

> Who is at fault when a computer makes a mistake?

"Fault" seeks to determine who is able to undo the mistake so that we can see that they undo it. It is possible the computer is the best candidate for that under some circumstances.

> That is accountability.

Thus we can conclude that computers are accountable, sometimes.

> You cannot put a computer in jail. You cannot fine a computer.

These are, perhaps, tools to try and deal with situations where the accountable refuse to see the mistake undone, but, similarly, computers can be turned off.

[canterburry]

What is the purpose of accountability?

[miltonlost]

To stop people from making illegal decisions ahead of time, and not just to punish them after. If there is no accountability to an AI, then a person making a killer robot would have no reason to not make a killer robot. If they were more to be imprisoned for making a killer robot, then they would be less likely to make a killer robot.

In a world without accountability, how do you stop evil people from doing evil things with AI as they want?