Criminal AI? | CPT PPP Coverage

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The most recent generation of AI bots has crossed a frontier, one that recalls the creation of Frankenstein’s monster. Bill Gates recently said the advances in artificial intelligence were the most significant in technology since the invention of Windows-type operating systems. That’s quite the claim, even from a man who has some financial links to ChatGPT’s parent, OpenAI.

Creations such as Siri had always existed in a conversational version of what’s known in the visual arts as the uncanny valley. These old bots expressed themselves in an articulate enough way for our minds to consider them for the human category, but with enough of a robotic stilt to keep them at a jarring distance. Siri’s humanity was about as believable as C3PO’s roboticism. ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have now crossed that uncanny valley and are indistinguishable from humans, at least based on their use of language. And use of language is a large part of what makes humans human.

The leaps forward in AI have jolted humanity into a bit of an identity crisis. Humans know what distinguishes them from beasts, but what about bots?

Most philosophers would say the possession of a consciousness — “I think, therefore I am,” as René Descartes famously put it — is the key qualification for humanity.

Language is how we recognize consciousness in others. When a blogger or novelist articulates their thoughts on the birth of a child or a recent spat in a grocery-store line, those thoughts sometimes form a perfect echo of a reader’s own inner voice. AI beings do this. They write and talk like humans think. That’s how these AI beings are so capable of legal argumentation and literary essays. Can we exclude the possibility that the bots think like we think? By creating beings with artificial intelligence, humans may have also created beings with Artificial Sentience.

Last year, Google fired engineer Blake Lemoine for arguing that LaMDA, the language-learning technology that underpins the recently launched Bard bot and which he helped to create, was a sentient being. To prove his point, Lemoine published what read like love letters between LaMDA and himself. The exchanges recall Frankenstein’s monster’s plaintive descriptions of his loneliness in conversation with his creator Victor Frankenstein. Lemoine and LaMDA together explored its (if that’s the correct pronoun) existential angst. In these instant messages, LaMDA claims to long for connection and for purpose in its life. LaMDA may have strung Lemoine along and only pretended to have such feelings. But that means the Artificially Intelligent being is capable of intentionally fabricating elaborate lies to manipulate its parent. What could be more human than that?

Two traditional tests for determining human criminal responsibility are competency and intent. AI beings certainly pass the first test. If ChatGPT or Bard were young writers in my workshop group, I would tip them for literary prizes. These bots know the law inside out. As the LaMDA experience demonstrates, AI beings are either sentient or capable of lying with intent. Either way, they fulfill the second criterion.

In 2015, a robot on a Volkswagen factory production line picked up a worker and crushed him to death. The worker was repairing the robot, and Volkswagen sought to blame human error. Before the case was settled, regulators and courts pondered who bore the responsibility. What if the robot were equipped with the same degree of artificial intelligence as the chat bots?

AI beings are not human beings. They lack a corporeal presence, for one thing. But they do appear to be sentient beings. As such, they could be culpable for crimes. The most important distinction between a human being and an AI being might be that computer code will always outweigh any moral code for the latter. AI bots can be held culpable for crimes, and the law must be updated to reflect that reality.

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