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Comment Re:These companies need to bring charges (Score 1) 125

You've almost got it. Keep trying and I'm sure you'll be able to puzzle it out.

Thanks for your confidence.

I've got it.

Computers can't commit crimes.
Same as 4-year-old kids can't commit crimes.

Parents of 4-year-old kids can commit a variety of crimes when they cause (or fail to reasonably prevent) their children to act in a way that damages property, limb, and life.
Companies that produce computers can commit a variety of crimes when they cause (or fail to reasonably prevent) their software/robots to act in a way that damages property, limb, and life.

Comment Re: Jeff Bezos said... (Score 2) 26

99.999% of which would be bad decisions.

It's not just about making any decisions. It's about making good ones.

Survivor bias.

You've seen the quip that goes something like: "LLMs are algorithms which produce hallucinations. Occasionally some of these hallucinations happen to be useful to humans."

So it is with people.
Our unscientific romanticism of notions like the Soul and Free Will make us retroactively ascribe Good/Bad-Decision cause-and-effect Narratives to outcomes.

100,000 people make 100,000 different decisions. Occasionally it happens that conditions in the world reward 1,000 of those decisions. Those 1,000 people then make 1,000 different secondary decisions. Occasionally it happens that conditions in the world reward 10 of those decisions. We then retroactively attribute narratives of Intelligence, Wisdom, Visionary Thinking to the 10 survivors and the animal/reptile brain kicks in with all sorts of neuroendocrine-induced reverence and casts the survivors as our bettors. We tell ourselves that the survivors deserve their rewards, because if we can believe that is true then we can believe that we too can hope to receive the rewards of Right Choices.

We are so biologically terrified to acknowledge the prospect of chaos in complex systems (such as the cosmos) that we would rather create and then worship a series of cruel and capricious Ubermenschen than live with the Conscious awareness that we are all amoeba flailing our array of pseudopods against the nature of reality. We need to believe we control the world we briefly blipped into and will soon blip back out of..

The ants that swarm your kitchen counter are there because that one explorer ant happened to go across your counter on that one time you happened to not notice that you dribbled a bit of fruit juice when you poured it two days ago. We would say that explorer ant's behavior was extremely successful. However, neither that ant - nor any of the others now spread across your counter - had Intelligence, Wisdom, or Visionary Thinking. If you had noticed the spill and wiped it up, that same ant may have expended its life and precious energy rambling around your entire kitchen finding absolutely nothing. Or falling prey to a spider. Or failing into the sink drain and drowning. Or being spotted and squished by you. The ant "made" the same "decision" and walked the same trail either way.

Comment Re:Not by AI, by Anthropic. (Score 1) 125

Your analysis is right, but the part about "would qualify as a crime if perpetrated by a person" isn't really the key. They key is rather, that to be guilty of a crime, the perpetrator must do so intentionally...with or without a computer or AI.

If the people running the AI test *intended* to break in to other sites, they could be guilty of crimes.

They intentionally created a device that they equipped with the capacity to commit crimes. They then activated that device and it exercised its range of capacity.

If they gave a kindergartener a loaded gun and sent them to the playground, but didn't actually tell the kid to shoot anyone, then even though they equipped the kid with the capacity to kill people and understood that a kindergartener explicitly has no capacity to understand the scope of its possible behaviors, we have now learned that it's okay -- neither the parents nor the kid at any point had active intent to kill people, and therefore no crime has occurred. No intent, no crime.
The DA's hands are tied.
There's nothing the legal system can do about all the resulting dead bodies.
May the odds be ever in your favor.

Comment Re:These companies need to bring charges (Score 1) 125

What remedy does the law provide for crimes committed by a computer? Not a person using a computer. The computer itself.

What remedy does the law provide for murder committed by a 4 year old kid whose parents handed them a loaded gun and sent them to the playground? Not the parent telling the kid to murder, but the 4 year old kid itself, merely exercising the capacity its parents equipped it with?

Comment Re:These companies need to bring charges (Score 4, Insightful) 125

Probably some of that, but it's also pretty hard to prosecute someone for a specific act absent evidence that they intended that act to occur. There's a whole family of "negligent X" crimes, but those tend to target specific outcomes ("that person is injured/dead because you were negligent"), and I don't think there are any negligent hacking statutes on the books.

No new laws needed.

I give my 4 year old a loaded 9mm pistol.
I tell them, "Now be careful with this. It could hurt people".
I send my 4 year old to a backyard birthday party with a bunch of other kids.
My 4 year old shoots a bunch of kids and they die.

You WILL be prosecuted and convicted as the criminal you in fact are.
There is ZERO legal wiggle room to base your criminal defense on, "But you see, Your Honor and People Of The Jury, at no point did I specifically tell my 4 year old to pull out a gun, point the gun at the other kids, and repeatedly pull the trigger until all the other kids are laying on the grass."

You, through your grossly negligent actions, gave a child the capacity to commit mass murder. You were aware that a 4 year old utterly lacks the capacity to understand reality at a level necessary to grasp the consequences of their actions.
You are 100% at fault. Every jury in the country will return a Guilty verdict in 5 minutes.

Exact same scenario with these companies.

Comment Re:Feels like the U.S. is turning into a dictators (Score 2, Insightful) 279

I hate to say it like that but it feels like the U.S. is slowly turning more and more into a dictatorship. Isn't this the kind of things you have to do in a dictatorship? I feel for the U.S. people right now.

There has been erosion over many years, but Trump is doing it's best to make it one right now.

Lucky for us he's an utter fuckup.

Comment Re:Huh? "One of the most"? (Score 1) 206

If Star Trek and Dr Who are the most successful science-fiction television franchises, then Star Trek is indeed one of the most successful science-fiction television franchises.

Haha. True. But by that standard, then Donald J Trump is indeed one of the most successful of the recent 2 Presidents.

It's a statement that is grammatically correct but doesn't really tell you much of value.

Comment Re:81 remote code execution? WTF? (Score 2) 63

If so, the only thing that can fix this is throwing it away and starting over. With a time-frame of 10-20 years or longer. That will not go well.

That go-back-and-rebuild-better will never happen for any currently deployed aspect of our global civilization again. At least not by human choice. It would only happen after some tangible event like some silicon-melting alien EMP attack or circuit-devouring nanobot swarm goes rogue.

It's the same thing as that quote that goes something like, "The economy can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".
The data centers can stay cycle through coprophagic tokens faster/longer than you can stay solvent.

Two paths to take:
A) Instead of pushing forward exuberantly into ever more complex nonsense, go back to the beginning and re-design deliberately and slowly with simplicity, stability, and scope in mind.
B) Yo dawg I heard you like vibe coding so we added vibe coding to your code with an agentic vibe coded agentic agent so you can vibe and code while you vibe code, agentically. To infinity, and beyond!

Our civilization always chooses B. Always. It never chooses A; it only does A when B was physically impossible anyway.

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