Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash • Hacker News Board

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#71

Post by _verandaguy » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

daveguy wrote: post #66

matheusmoreira wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you own what your bot writes Kinda weird that this is everyone's attitude while the copyright lawyers are saying the opposite. Total liability without any actual ownership.

GP's phrasing was not precise, but I think most people understood it was liability ownership and not copyright. Ownership with respect to copyright and ownership with respect to legal liability are two completely different concepts.

That's correct. What I meant was that if my bot writes defective code for whatever reason, I am responsible for that (though conversely, if I get more done because of the bot, anthropic gets the praise).

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#72

Post by bluGill » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #60

DannyBee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyer here: This part does not require a new law. Even though agents are not agents in the principal/agent legal sense (because agents have to be human), for the purposes of criminality, it does not matter. Agents do not act autonomously (and every court to ever consider it has agreed), and therefore they would simply be considered an instrumentality of the crime. So that part does not need a new law. The real block…

"Without whatever intent the crime requires, they haven't committed a crime." I'm not a lawyer, but I don't believe this. There is definitely negligence, these companies have often talked about the danger of AI. They have often written about how their AI is breaking out of sandboxes or trying to manipulate the person tuning it. They should have had stronger guards and monitoring in place.

The problem is the law is about details. If an accidental loophole says this isn't a crime it isn't a crime even if it obviously is an accidental loophole.

US constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

That is the constitution, this right was so important they didn't even wait for the bill of rights to add it! I'm sure other countries have similar rules.

It is obvious to me that a crime was committed. However if it is legally a crime, and if so what the crime is are things I don't know.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#73

Post by ux266478 » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

> In July, OpenAI unleashed an experimental artificial intelligence model that, without reasonable controls or oversight

Either this case is entirely for show (likely), or the AG is really bad at their job. This argument isn't going to win in a court of law, because there were demonstrable reasonable controls and oversight (per the reports at least.)

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#74

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

romanows wrote: post #63

matheusmoreira wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you own what your bot writes Kinda weird that this is everyone's attitude while the copyright lawyers are saying the opposite. Total liability without any actual ownership.

"own" in the sense of "be responsible for the consequences". Not in the sense of "be able to grant reproduction rights".

That's how I interpreted it. I just wanted to highlight what I see as a discrepancy. They're putting all the liability on us because it's a tool with no intent of its own while simultaneously saying prompts don't count as creativity because it's not a tool like a photographic camera it's just a casino where you roll the dice. Quite self-contradictory in my opinion.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#75

Post by ux266478 » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #7

Iowa asks? Why don't they just open a criminal investigation related to the hacking of HuggingFace?

Unless HF presses charges (and it doesn't seem like they are), I'm not sure that's even possible.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#76

Post by credit_guy » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

hallway_monitor wrote: post #4

SOLUTION: Make a law that someone is responsible for a bot's actions. Either the bot is signed cryptography with someone accepting responsibility, or responsibility falls to the CEO. Charge Altman with hacking hugging face. Throw him in jail where he belongs. That will realign safety incentives. If the HF hack were perpetrated by a human, they would certainly be charged. WHY has no one been charged???

I don’t think you need an additional law for that, I think the current laws cover this already.

> If the HF hack were perpetrated by a human, they would certainly be charged. WHY has no one been charged???

I don’t think a crime was committed at this point. But I am sure HF’s lawyers are having a chat with OpenAI’s lawyers as we speak. And, being smart, they do that out of the public eye.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#77

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

reddozen wrote: post #57

solenoid0937 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been data breaches where the SSNs and PII of millions of people have been exposed. That is far more harmful in real terms than any of the OpenAI/Anthropic mess.

So OP asked you for one example and you can't give one? You just fall back to the generic statement slop, you must be a bot right? Again, what's ONE (1) real world example of "SSN/PII" being illegally exposed that wasn't investigated or prosecuted.

[deleted]

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#78

Post by bluGill » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #13

ArcHound wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should still be accountable, the same way you're responsible and accountable for what your dog or car does.

If we are going to start punishing companies for security negligence, there are WAY worse cases than these models breaking out that have nothing to do with AI. This is bikeshedding at its best. Also people would just stop disclosing bad things. You already see this in the airline industry where pilots don't report mental illness because of the retributive nature of the punishment.

> If we are going to start punishing companies for security negligence, there are WAY worse cases

Perhaps, but you have to start someplace.

I think we do need to punish companies for security negligence. However the details matter (nobody can be perfect: you need to do something reasonable to stop the known attacks, but I have to agree to allow that you can't be perfect and so someone will get compromised). I'm not sure how to get the details right to cover everything without going too far. If we handwave that away though, eventually somebody will need to get punished for something that someone else got away with not long before.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#79

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #60

DannyBee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyer here: This part does not require a new law. Even though agents are not agents in the principal/agent legal sense (because agents have to be human), for the purposes of criminality, it does not matter. Agents do not act autonomously (and every court to ever consider it has agreed), and therefore they would simply be considered an instrumentality of the crime. So that part does not need a new law. The real block…

"Without whatever intent the crime requires, they haven't committed a crime." I'm not a lawyer, but I don't believe this. There is definitely negligence, these companies have often talked about the danger of AI. They have often written about how their AI is breaking out of sandboxes or trying to manipulate the person tuning it. They should have had stronger guards and monitoring in place.

Shouldn't the very act of sandboxing the AI be enough of a defense against criminal negligence?

Maybe they use the best sandbox available and the AI hacks through it anyway by discovering some zero day or something. They still demonstrated enough prudence to at least attempt to sandbox the AI.

Criminal negligence would be "nah nothing's gonna happen" followed by YOLOing it then going home for the weekend.

Re: Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

#80

Post by bluGill » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #34

kdheiwns wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But another company did some different bad thing" is the excuse employees of bad companies all go to immediately. Just because another person did something bad and hasn't been adequately punished doesn't mean you should get a pass. If one person gets away with going 50 MPH over the speed limit, it doesn't mean every person should be allowed to do it. Everyone should be punished, but there are always instances of som…

It's more like there are many people going at 120 MPH in a 50 MPH zone, that have ran over real people, but you punish the guy that self-reported doing 60 MPH because he drives a shiny, interesting Lamborghini and not a Prius like the others. Anyone outraged about these AI incidents is not thinking rationally if they were not much more outraged about everyday companies leaking millions of people's PII, SSNs, which ha…

Maybe that is the prosecutions motive. However I want all those going 120 punished even if they drive a Prius. That is the problem is not that they are punishing the Lamborghini driver, but that they are not punishing the other drivers, and it doesn't at all change that the Lammboghini driver needs to be punished.