[oneseven]

They're probably worried about liability. Let's say that Oracle finds out you reverse engineered their DB using Gemini. You can be sure they will sue Google. Not just for providing the tools, but you could make the argument that it's actually Gemini doing the reverse engineering, and on Google's hardware no less.

[Wowfunhappy]

Let's say that Oracle finds out you reverse engineered their DB using IDA Pro. Would you expect Oracle to sue Hex Rays?

I don't understand why everything changes as soon as an LLM is involved. An LLM is just software.

[sunnybeetroot]

The difference is IDA Pro doesn’t do something unless you instruct it to, an LLM is unpredictable and may end up performing an action you did not intend. I see it often, it presents me options and does wait for my response, just starts doing what it thinks I want.

[ethbr1]

This. It's going to be tricky for the frontier model labs to argue they didn't intentionally design their models to do so, when the models take illegal actions.

I'm not even sure how one would construct a viable legal argument around that for SOTA models + harnesses, given the amount of creative choices that go into building them.

It'd be something like "Yes, we spent billions of dollars and thousands of person-hours creating these things, but none of that creative effort was responsible for or influenced this particular illegal choice the model made."

And they're caught between a rock and a hard place, because if they cripple initiative, they kill their agentic utility.

Ultimately, this will take a DMCA Section 512-like safe harbor law to definitively clear up: making it clear that outcomes from LLMs are the responsibility of their prompting users, even if the LLM produces unintended actions.

[Wowfunhappy]

> I'm not even sure how one would construct a viable legal argument around that for SOTA models + harnesses, given the amount of creative choices that go into building them.

I'm not a lawyer, but to me the legal case seems pretty obvious. "We spent billions of dollars creating this thing to be a good programmer, but we did not intend for it to reverse engineer Oracle's database. No creative effort was spent making it good at reverse engineering Oracle's database. The model reverse-engineered Oracle's database because the user directed it to do so."

If merely fine-tuning an LLM to be good at reverse engineering is enough to be found liable when a user does something illegal, what does that mean for torrent clients?

[ethbr1]

> No creative effort was spent making it good at reverse engineering Oracle's database.

That's the bit that's going to be nasty in evidence. 'So you didn't have any reverse engineering in your training or testing sets?'

[skeledrew]

Reverse engineering skill is just a byproduct of programming skill. They go hand in hand.

[jodrellblank]

> “making it clear that outcomes from LLMs are the responsibility of their prompting users, even if the LLM produces unintended actions”

So if I ask “how does a real world production quality database implement indexes?” And it says “I disassembled Oracle and it does XYZ” then I am liable and owe Oracle a zillion dollars?

Whereas if I caveat “you may look at the PostgreSQL or SQLite or other free database engine source code, or industry studies, academic papers; you may not disassemble anything or touch any commercial software” - if it does, I’m still liable?

Who would dare use an LLM for anything in those circumstances?

[nullstyle]

If they thought they would succeed, no doubt oracle would sue. I expect bad behavior from multinationals, especially oracle

[lokar]

They would not even expect it to succeed, just make an example of the company (the lawsuit is the punishment) to discourage others.

[sanex]

We need that lawsuit to happen already so we can establish precedent. The person in the driver's seat of the Tesla should be at fault. The engineer using the llm should be at fault. The person behind the gun not the manufacturer should be at fault.

[Iolaum]

We shouldn't need a lawsuit. The legislative branch should pass a law clarifying those things, that's their job.

[jon_richards]

Then you need a lawsuit to determine whether the law is “constitutional”.

[hvb2]

> The person in the driver's seat of the Tesla should be at fault.

I don't think this is a good analogy. For Tesla right now it might fly. However, when their software gets to waymo level of autonomy, I would expect liability to shift to the manufacturer.

If anything, I think that would be the true proof of a company trusting their software to allow for autonomous driving

[rokob]

> However, when their software gets to waymo level of autonomy

Luckily that won’t happen.

[kelvinjps10]

Also especially if they claim they're selling autonomous cars

[dotancohen]

I believe that Mercedes does offer manufacturer liability.

[missedthecue]

In the America, whoever has the most money is liable. It's not worth it for the legal industry otherwise. The lawyer earns his pay by convincing the court that whatever established precedent doesn't apply to his case.

[sanex]

Unfortunately.

[cortesoft]

Also because Google is the one with a lot more money than whoever was using Gemini.

[redanddead]

they're very worried about liability, it used to be a small thing, now it's as important as being on the frontier

sad to see, bc China doesn't give a fuck about liability, this is a structural disadvantage

the labs don't feel very protected by government, meanwhile the chinese government is yet again fostering protectionism

american industry keeps getting fucked by dubious lawmakers