The interesting thing about AI v. other disruptive technologies (like the internet, steam engine, etc), is that AI has been personified both by the manufacturers of it (Anthropic being the most blatant by using a human name for its product) and users.
That makes it way more likely that people blame AI (doesn't make it right by any means, but does mean that the actual blame gets diffused even more).
How is that a problem? That makes it far worse for companies, after all. If an employee of a company makes a mistake then the consequences are:
1) employee was willingly sabotaging the company: employee gets jail time plus fine, employer is on the hook financially
2) employee was involved either in accident or just made a stupid decision: employer is on the hook financially
So if that's the case, then employers are financially responsible for everything the AI they use says. That's the rule for employees.
Note: this is different from, say if a company uses a car and it just starts by itself and drives into the next door warehouse setting it on fire (ie. some sort of designed-in decision/issue)
: in that case the maker of the car is responsible, both financially and criminally, even if an employee or even the boss/owner/everyone at the company were involved.
Of course, guaranteed that governments will change this the first time a court makes this obvious connection. Why do I think that?
Well, for example, the UK government changed the rule when it turned out the post-office's written software (written by contractors, under post office and thus government responsibility and accountability) decided to cause incredible damage by blaming innocent people for stealing. Then, a special law was voted that in that specific case it didn't apply, and the government department, nor any of it's employees, were responsible.
Just like, for example, Pennsylvania changed the rules for unwittingly-but-directly aiding criminal activity when it turned out half the Pennsylvania government was complicit in the kids-for-cash scandal (because in that case, normally, you wouldn't be criminally liable, but you WOULD be liable for any financial damage you do)
Regarding "how is that a problem" it has nothing to do with the financial obligations (I agree with your take that the company is on the hook either way). It's about being able to learn and improve.
In order to learn and improve you have to know what went wrong, with AI being personified and pulled into the pool of entities that may be at fault, it makes it harder to figure out what actually went wrong and learn. Not impossible to figure out, just harder.
>You can't 'blame' the AI, as it can't be held accountable.
Seems like more of a semantic distinction IMO. Yes, I can't technically "blame" the AI because it's not accountable. But what word would you suggest for "I had [X technology] handle [Y task] and it failed to perform that task?" I can't "blame" my router if I lose internet and it prevents me from jumping on a Zoom call, but it's also true that the router failed to do the thing it was supposed to do.
Do you blame the hammer for bending the nail, or the person driving it? AI is nothing more than a tool being used by people.
When my internet goes down, I blame either my ISP for having an outage, or the manufacturer of my router (assuming it's a router issue? Haven't had that happen personally but I'm certain it exists) (Or i did something dumb with my ufw again but that's on me)
If you create an autonomous system and it fails, blame should be on you, imo.
The word is still 'blame', it just needs to be applied correctly.
You can't 'blame' the AI, as it can't be held accountable.