The railway and the balloon

Is AI more like a train or a hot air balloon? Veronica Paternolli and Ryan Calo asked at this year’s We Robot. Nineteenth-century hot air balloons were notoriously uncontrollable. The US legal system assigned strict liability: it was your fault if your balloon crashed in someone’s backyard, even if you did everything you could to prevent it. Railways were far more disruptive but also far more predictable, and therefore were liable only in cases of negligence. Which regime should apply to AI is an ongoing debate. Calo and Patornolli also wondered if agentic AI could reverse 30 years of being forced to take on busy work companies formerly did for us. This “shadow work” encompasses everything from retrieving bank statements and completing reCaptchas to pumping our own gas. Actually, more than 30 years: in 1962, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple complained that self-service supermarkets were replacing shopkeepers who served you. If companies want a negligence regime, Patornelli and Calo…