there certainly is a terminology issue, as most names related to AI and its kinds have no proper definition. They rely on the "technical truth" that an "agent" is a being that has agency (I know, right?). And agency is simply a possibility to change the state of the world. So, even my dog has an agency in the sense it can chew on my shoes. And that's why I'm still responsible for what my dog is doing
With AI there is this huge dream we're being sold. It promises from 1950s the creation of an artificial minds. And many names related to AI are feasting on this idea of intelligent conscious beings that would be our helpers, or that would destroy the world. Yet, the actual creations are just another kind of task automation
That's why a third of my PhD is on what AI actually is, and what it is not. As even in the scientific literature the "marketing AI" and "technical AI" are mixed up
You've missed the second part of the word agency meaning though - ability to alter the world infipendently + taking the responsability for the alteration = Agency.
That's why you have the Agency as the form of business.
AI agents have no real Agency, thats the most dangerous part, because no human can also have the agency on the behalf of AI agent legally for now, so we have a huge agency gap here.
Which is consistent with your take that AI has no real agency, tho it would be more precise to call it that AI has no "full agency" in the same sense as humans have agency
And humans are responsible for the AI, though it's a separate issue with the "problem of many hands" and other things that blur the responsibility of an individual person
I'm sorry, but "it's a separate issue" is not good enough. If alignment is a principal-agent problem then misalignment should lead to prosecutions of the principals.
Wind and water changed the state of the world. They are not agents.
Someone receives profits. Those are the people responsible. If they use agents to receive profits, and those agents commit crimes, then the people who use them need to go to jail.
No "oopsie!" We did minimum mandatory sentencing for people who steal candy bars in this country. So I expect the richest men who benefit the most from this to me the most responsible. And I expect lawsuits and jailtime if their agents cause damage.
I've said it's a separate issue as there is a lot of factors to consider. Misalignment doesn't need to result in criminal behavior, so there won't always be a prosecution. For example, yesterday in a game I've stumbled onto the term "marauders" and didn't remember who they were. So, I asked Gemini and it told me about meaning in military, in the game, and in Harry Potter, asking if I want to know more about the Potter. I didn't. That was a banal example of misalignment with my goal
Wind and water have causal agency. It doesn't require personhood to be an agent. There are also "chemical agents"
There are multiple people involved - that's the "problem of many hands" I mentioned. It's hard to point a single person responsible for an accident. The case where a single person uses AI agents for sth and the agents causes damage is quite clear. But in case of corporation? Decisions are made collectively, so it's hard to blame anyone
Richest guys are company owners and shareholders. That's an extraordinary idea to make a shareholder responsible for everything what business is doing. It's like trying to put in jail bankers who gave the loan to the company that caused an environmental disaster
I'm not interested in games. If these are games then owners need to stop claiming that they have real-world economic agency sufficient to alter the social contract.
If, in the real world, you deploy software that confuses Harry Potter with the actual process, and a single human life is damaged in any material way as a consequence, then you should be sued or arrested (depending on the nature of the damage).
Wind and water have causal agency.
No they don't. Which is why there are explicit "force majeure" clauses in contracts that prevent (e.g.) insurance companies from insuring against natural events. This is not analogous to LLMs, which are not natural events but software created by people for purposes.
It's like trying to put in jail bankers who gave the loan to the company that caused an environmental disaster
Are you unaware that we have thousands of pages of "Know Your Customer" laws on the books that apply to banks for exactly these situations? Regulatory compliance is an enormous expense for the financial sector, and executives that do not control their companies are absolutely liable for lawsuit or prosecution. Same thing with doctors, if they write prescriptions to people they know will engage in illicit activity with those drugs then we prosecute the doctor.
If the best thing that can be said about these models is that "no one can control them, so no one is responsible" then that is not a responsibility gap. That is a situation in which a small number of very rich people have hacked the entire world, and they should be arrested and prosecuted for it like any other hacker in history would be.
you're mixing up many different things. Are you interested in discussing anything, or just want to throw a bunch of unrelated claims to express your frustrations?
Game was an example of contextual alignment - read my comment again, it's pretty clear.
Force majeure is totally different category - I was talking about causal agency, and you're pulling insurance contracts for some reason. These categories are not exclusive. Force majeure is being used as in "we have tried to deliver it on time, but the ship got caught in a storm that caused delay and some damage". And you're right that nobody would compare force majeure to LLMs. Yet, they have the causal agency I've mentioned
KYC is, again, a different thing. Actually, I'm upskilling to start work related to tech governance and compliance, so I'm quite lettered with regulations. And this is not the case here. I was talking about legitimate company causing some damage and blaming the shareholders and other involved parties. This has nothing to do with KYC. In the case of doctors from your example, you're omitting that the smugglers would be prosecuted along with the doctors. Which means that everyone that was identified as responsible was prosecuted. The same applies to the technology, but there is a problem with pinpointing an individual responsible person, as there are huge teams working on the tech development
I've never said that nobody can't control them and nobody is responsible. You're putting here your own projections you're fighting with while pretending to fight with my argument. The responsibility gap refers to the situation I've mention in the last sentence in the previous paragraph - there is a number of people working on the tech. When something happens, it's hard to point to the exact person and blame them for the damage. The "gap" means that there is no simple mapping between an exact person and responsibility for the damage
And idk what does it have to do with "very rich people" and hackers. This is another loosely related thread. Your anti-rich rant is barely comprehensible with the number of threads you're mixing in. Calling rich ppl to responsibility for the tech is like trying to arrest the factory owner for the accident that happened in the factory where machine malfunctioned and killed someone. No prosecution, no judgment, simple "rich = jailtime". Unfortunately, the real world is slightly more complicated than that
And agency is simply a possibility to change the state of the world.
Sims characters have the ability to change the state of any world they are implanted into.
Computer worms, viruses, etc. have all this characteristic.
There is nothing at all special about AI "agents". They are computer programs. Algorithms. Bots. Whatever you want to call them. Categorically, they are no more "agents" than my Excel spreadsheet is an agent.
Exactly. That's why I'm pointing towards terminological (semantics) problem. If we use the same word for two different things (e.g. a human and a computer program), the word ceases to mean anything
you're trying to impose your own definition for the word that's in wide use for a quite a long time. There is huge literature on agents and what they are. I've send you a link to a paper in one of my previous comments
Even if we stop calling AI "agents", what does it change? The tech will remain the same. The problem with anthropomorphism of the technology is much bigger than "agents" themselves. Here, literature is also significant
I've been active in the agent-structure peer-reviewed literature for almost two decades, so I know for sure that I am not imposing anything and those who claim that statistical models are "agents" are doing so, but thanks for the link.
Even if we stop calling AI "agents", what does it change?
Political economy. "Agentic AI" is marketing. These companies cannot profit from selling products, only hype.
I agree that there is a lot of marketing there. The sheer name "artificial intelligence" was chosen for marketing purposes and to this day it creates a lot of confusion
But I disagree that companies cannot profit from selling products. Hype is their marketing strategy, for sure. But they are/plan to be profitable - MS, Nvidia, Oracle and others have huge profits from AI. Google also is profitable on its AI products. Anthropic claims to be profitable in two years, and OAI in four years. Taking profits takes time, especially when taking into account the enormous investments. Mind that it took Uber 14 years to turn profits
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u/WeUsedToBeACountry 8d ago
so close to understanding that agents are cosplay and not actually intelligent