The legality of the AI industry’s business practices has long been a hanging question. As a “disruptive” new technology, artificial intelligence has caused a wealth of problems at the very same time that it has offered society new benefits. Notably, AI has been used to mislead consumers, to create new forms of disinformation and propaganda, and to discriminate against certain groups of people. Now, the California Attorney General’s office has issued a legal memo emphasizing the fact that all of that stuff is probably illegal.
On January 13th, California AG Rob Bonta issued two legal advisories that illustrate all of the myriad areas where the AI industry could be getting itself into trouble. “The AGO encourages the responsible use of AI in ways that are safe, ethical, and consistent with human dignity,” the advisory says. “For AI systems to achieve their positive potential without doing harm, they must be developed and used ethically and legally,” it continues, before dovetailing into the many ways in which AI companies could, potentially, be breaking the law.
Some of those ways include:
Bonta’s advisory also includes a list of recently passed regulations related to the AI industry. The fact that the advisory says that all of these activities “may” break the law seems to signal that companies should effectively sell-regulate, lest they stray into criminal territory and tempt the state to take action against them.
Bonta’s memo clearly illustrates what a legal clusterfuck the AI industry represents, though it doesn’t even get around to mentioning U.S. copyright law, which is another legal gray area where AI companies are perpetually running into trouble. Currently, OpenAI is being sued by the New York Times, which has accused the company of breaking U.S. copyright law by using its articles to train its algorithms. AI companies have repeatedly been sued over this issue but, because AI’s foray into content generation represents largely unsettled legal territory, none of those lawsuits have yet been successful.
Artificial intelligenceCaliforniaOpenAI
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Source: Gizmodo