AI companies shouldn’t get a free pass to break things

Former artificial intelligence researcher Jacob Coxon recently told the world that the companies he once worked for are driving humanity to the brink of extinction. Days after he made his claims, tech CEOs seemed to agree, and in a series of lengthy manifestos and X posts, asked for … an antitrust exemption. Wait, what? What these companies need is not more power, to say nothing of a government handout, but some long-overdue accountability. One way to give it to them is to let the people they harm sue them in court. I am introducing legislation in Congress to make the corporations liable for the actions of their agents when they design the agents in a reckless fashion. My legislation would also make users liable when they deploy the agents in a reckless way. And it would toughen criminal penalties. The federal government already has laws on the books against hacking. It’s time to make clear those laws apply to AI companies. My legislation would give prosecutors the power to charge companies with crimes when the firms know their agents are capable of criminal conduct and fail to create reasonable safeguards. We should apply the same rule to AI users. If a user knowingly deploys an AI agent and allows it to commit crimes, like crashing systems and stealing data, the user should be criminally liable.

[Josh Hawley, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Missouri.]