What you're missing is that "making decisions" isn't the same as being technically capable of making a selection.
Making decisions means taking responsibility.[0] This is really all there is to it -- a computer cannot decide, not because humans are uniquely able to make a choice based on input, but because a computer cannot be responsible.
You can decide to do something based on the output of the computer, but that's you deciding to do that.
At any point where a computer appears to have made a decision, someone else was behind it. You can complicate this, randomise stuff, obfuscate things, etc. but ultimately either the computer was set in motion by a person, or it malfunctioned. The malfunctioning computer thing is quite interesting but it's not going to change the outcome.
LLMs ("AI" today) have not changed this. It's still just software, it's still doing what it's told. Surprising future technologies may alter this, but there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that's a likely future and it certainly is not the case today.
> Black-and-white positions that insist anyone creating or using an AI is responsible for anything it does wrong under any circumstances are also unrealistic.
At this point in time, AI is just a piece of software. It doesn't matter how useful it is or not. It's just software. We can and should treat it like software.
So to evaluate when/where/how someone should (or should not) be held responsible for something that "the AI did", we can start at the same point as we would for any other vendor/creator/user of a piece of software.
I'm not going to get into that -- my point is that the framework exists. And yes, sure, maybe that framework needs some tweaks in consideration of the new software, that's OK. The starting point should still be in reality, where software is software.
[0] Yes, this is nuanced, things go wrong, different situations, etc. etc.
> At any point where a computer appears to have made a decision, someone else was behind it.
Are you arguing that not computers are best at chess, but that whichever human last updated the chess algorithm is actually the reigning chess champion?
Making decisions means taking responsibility.[0] This is really all there is to it -- a computer cannot decide, not because humans are uniquely able to make a choice based on input, but because a computer cannot be responsible. You can decide to do something based on the output of the computer, but that's you deciding to do that. At any point where a computer appears to have made a decision, someone else was behind it. You can complicate this, randomise stuff, obfuscate things, etc. but ultimately either the computer was set in motion by a person, or it malfunctioned. The malfunctioning computer thing is quite interesting but it's not going to change the outcome.
LLMs ("AI" today) have not changed this. It's still just software, it's still doing what it's told. Surprising future technologies may alter this, but there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that's a likely future and it certainly is not the case today.
> Black-and-white positions that insist anyone creating or using an AI is responsible for anything it does wrong under any circumstances are also unrealistic.
At this point in time, AI is just a piece of software. It doesn't matter how useful it is or not. It's just software. We can and should treat it like software. So to evaluate when/where/how someone should (or should not) be held responsible for something that "the AI did", we can start at the same point as we would for any other vendor/creator/user of a piece of software. I'm not going to get into that -- my point is that the framework exists. And yes, sure, maybe that framework needs some tweaks in consideration of the new software, that's OK. The starting point should still be in reality, where software is software.
[0] Yes, this is nuanced, things go wrong, different situations, etc. etc.