alt Hacker News> - a tool is activated with operator intent (at some point in the call-chain)
This again is where the simplistic assumption breaks down. Just because you can claim that a person kick started something, that does not mean that person is aware and responsible for all its doing.
Let's put things in perspective: if you install a mobile app from the app store, are you responsible and accountable for every single thing the app does in your system? Because with LLMs and agents you have even less understanding and control and awareness of what they are doing.
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> if you install a mobile app from the app store, are you responsible and accountable for every single thing the app does in your system?
Yes. I can try to vet the app to the best of your abilities and beyond that it's a tradeoff between how likely is it to cause harm and do the benefits outweigh these harms.
Of course everyone is differently qualified to do this but my argument is more about professionals. Managers should know better than to blindly trust LLM companies. Engineers should take better care what they allow LLMs to do and what tools they give them.
There is a difference between "I couldn't have known" and "I didn't know". You can know that LLMs are not trustworthy. You couldn't have know what they do but you already knew that trusting them blindly might be bad.
You could know that giving a baby a razor blade is a bad idea. You can't know what exactly will happen but you might have a pretty good idea that it will probably be not good.
There can be more than one person or entity to be held accountable, depending on the details of impact
If I install a powerful/dangerous app, and I come under harm, I have some accountability — most of it if it's due to user error (eg: I install termux and `rm -rf /`).
If it's malware, and Google/Apple approved said app to their store which is where I got it from, when their whole value proposition for walled-garden storefronts is protecting users, then they have significant accountability.
If the app requests more permissions than necessary for stated goals, and/or intentionally harms users via misrepresentation or misdirection (malware), the app publisher should also be held accountable (by the storefront, legally, etc).
I'm also unclear what angle you are arguing: are you stating that because tools have gotten so complicated that the end user may not understand how it all works, no one should be considered responsible or held accountable? Or that the tool (currently a non-entity) itself should be held accountable somehow? Or that no one other than the distributor of the tool should be accountable?*
that does not mean that person is aware and responsible for all its doing.
>Just because you can claim that a person kick started something
Kick started what? If you decided to give an LLM access to your database, it's completely on you when you when it does something you don't want. You should've known better.
If all you "kickstart" is an LLM generating text that you can use however you decide, there will never be anything to worry about from the LLM.
> Let's put things in perspective: if you install a mobile app from the app store, are you responsible and accountable for every single thing the app does in your system?
Yes, and it bothers me that others don't feel the same. You vetted the app, you installed the app, and you gave it permission to do whatever on your system. Of course you're responsible.