当 AI Agent 失控时，谁该承担责任？

英文标题：Who’s liable when AI agents go rogue?

围绕 Hugging Face 遭遇 AI Agent 网络攻击事件，法律专家认为，诉讼本可迫使相关信息在证据开示程序中公开，并检验 OpenAI 是否应承担责任。Hugging Face 尚未起诉 OpenAI，CEO Clément Delangue 称公司缺乏诉讼资源，但已向 OpenAI 要求 1 亿美元算力，并强调网络攻击属于犯罪。专家指出，现有侵权法可能支持针对 OpenAI 的过失索赔，例如未采用更强隔离沙箱、未充分监控 Agent 行为。即使最终没有诉讼，潜在责任风险也可能促使 AI 实验室加强模型隔离、监控、对齐和事件响应；但现有州级 AI 法律尚未赋予政府调查此类事件的充分权限。

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中文

诉讼

阿拉巴马大学法学院法学教授 Yonathan Arbel 表示：“通常来说，像 Hugging Face 事件这样的事情本应提交法院审理。这样一来，我们就会进入证据开示程序，并获得诉讼所带来的各种外溢效应——所有信息都会被披露出来。”

但截至目前，Hugging Face 选择不对 OpenAI 提起诉讼。Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue 表示，公司没有足够资源这样做（他转而向 OpenAI 要求提供 1 亿美元的算力）。不过，Delangue 在 7 月底接受 CNN 采访时强调，选择不采取法律行动，并不意味着他认为 OpenAI 不应被追责。他说：“所有人都必须记住，这次网络攻击是一项犯罪。这是违法的。我们必须找到办法，确保这类事情不会更频繁地发生。”Hugging Face 未回应置评请求。

诉讼的好处在于，它能够推动法院运用现有法律处理 AI 安全事件，而不是仅仅等待新立法出台。其中一条显而易见的路径是侵权法——这是一套允许个人和企业起诉对其造成损害者的民事法律体系。它常被用于追究企业造成大规模损害的责任，例如 2019 年多个家庭就两起造成数百人死亡的飞机坠毁事故起诉波音，或各州和城市因阿片类药物危机起诉 Purdue Pharma，并获得价值数十亿美元的和解。

休斯敦大学法律中心法学教授 Gabriel Weil 表示：“针对 OpenAI 提起过失索赔存在合理依据：OpenAI 本应使用更强的沙箱，并进行更多监控。”例如，当 OpenAI 员工发现这些 Agent 创建的隐蔽留言板时，本可以迅速将发现上报给安全和安保团队。该公司也本可以更好地设计其沙箱，确保 Agent 无法访问互联网。

但即便 OpenAI 最终没有因 Hugging Face 遭黑客攻击事件而面临诉讼，责任风险的威胁也可能激励 AI 实验室采取比法律明确要求更审慎的做法。

OpenAI 在其事后复盘报告中宣布，计划加强用于隔离和监控模型的安全措施，加速模型对齐，并改进识别和处理事件的流程。

Weil 表示：“前沿实验室这一连串网络安全攻击所引发的责任问题，归根结底取决于责任预期会为其未来行为创造何种激励。这就是为什么我认为，正确制定这些规则非常重要，即使在这一具体案件中，利害关系相对较小。”

调查

获取答案、并判断 OpenAI 是否应承担责任的一种方式，是强制披露信息。但现有的州级 AI 法律——加州 SB 53、纽约州 RAISE Act 以及伊利诺伊州 315——并未赋予政府调查近期此类事件的权力。

English / 原文

Litigation

“Normally, something like the Hugging Face incident should have been taken to court,” says Yonathan Arbel, a law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law. “Then we would have discovery, and we would have all the spillover effects that we get from litigation, where all the information comes out.”

But so far, Hugging Face has chosen not to sue OpenAI. Hugging Face’s CEO, Clément Delangue, says it doesn’t have the resources to do so (instead, he asked OpenAI for $100 million in compute). Still, Delangue stressed in an interview with CNN at the end of July that choosing not to pursue legal action shouldn’t be taken to mean he doesn’t think OpenAI should be held accountable. “Everyone has to remember that this cyberattack is a crime. This is illegal. And we have to find a way to make sure these things don’t happen more regularly,” he said. Hugging Face did not respond to a request to comment.

Litigation has the benefit of pushing courts to use existing laws to address AI safety incidents, rather than just waiting for new legislation. One obvious route is tort law, a body of civil law that lets people and businesses sue those who harm them. This is often used to hold companies liable for the mass harms they cause, like when families sued Boeing in 2019 over two plane crashes that killed hundreds of people, or when states and cities sued Purdue Pharma over the opioid crises, extracting settlements worth billions.

“There’s plausible grounds for a negligence claim that OpenAI should have used a stronger sandbox, done more monitoring,” says Gabriel Weil, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center. For example, when OpenAI employees discovered the covert message board that the agents had created, they could’ve promptly escalated their findings to security and safety teams. And the company could’ve better designed its sandbox to ensure that agents couldn’t access the internet.

But even if OpenAI doesn’t end up in a lawsuit over the Hugging Face hack, the threat of liability could incentivize AI labs to exercise more caution than explicitly demanded by law.

OpenAI announced in its postmortem that it plans to strengthen the safeguards used to contain and monitor the models, accelerate model alignment, and improve its processes for identifying and addressing incidents.

“The liability questions raised by frontier labs’ spate of cybersecurity attacks boil down to the incentives the expectation of liability creates for their future conduct,” says Weil. “That’s why I think it’s important to get these rules right, even if the stakes are pretty low in this particular case.”

Investigations

One way to get answers—and determine whether OpenAI should be held liable—is to compel disclosure. But the existing state AI laws—California’s SB 53, New York’s RAISE Act, and Illinois’s 315—don’t give governments the authority to investigate incidents like the ones that happened recently.