The writer was director of the national AI office under President Joe Biden and US Ambassador to the OECD from 2009-12Last Thursday, the White House scrapped an executive order that would have standardised pre-release safety testing of advanced AI models. Once again, those advocating a trust-but-verify approach lost to the no-holds-barred camp.
AI currently operates in an accountability-free zone. As it replaces existing systems throughout the economy, its black-box algorithms cannot easily be bound by rules written for humans. The question is no longer whether these tools will proliferate, but whether the terms are set by democratic choice or the companies moving fastest. The risks of getting this wrong are serious. Chatbots giving medical advice face neither the malpractice liability nor the licensing oversight of human doctors. In the US, governments can use error-prone AI systems to deny benefits without citizens’ recourse to explanation from or appeal to a human.
US courts are struggling to apply existing law. A lawsuit against OpenAI alleges product liability and competition violations, which it denies, for conduct for which “every therapist, teacher, and human being would face criminal prosecution.” The court must decide whether a chatbot is even a product, and if it can be held liable for competing unfairly with humans by doing what humans legally cannot.