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Comment by Jaron Lanier

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Virtual reality pioneer and computer scientist
I don’t care how autonomous your AI is – some human has to be responsible for what it does, or we cannot have a functioning society.
AI Verified source (Jan 15, 2026)
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Verification History

AI Verified Verified. On the supplied TechRadar URL, the article published 15 January 2026 by Graham Barlow explicitly attributes the stored sentence to Jaron Lanier in the body text, and the sentence appears verbatim as the first sentence of a longer quoted passage. The stored author, date, source URL, and content are therefore correct. ([techradar.com](https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/society-cannot-function-if-no-one-is-accountable-for-ai-jaron-lanier-the-godfather-of-virtual-reality-discusses-how-far-our-empathy-should-extend-to-ai-in-episode-two-of-new-podcast-the-ten-reckonings)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3d ago
Disputed The January 15, 2026 TechRadar source attributes related remarks to Jaron Lanier, but not in the exact submitted wording: it has "Society cannot function if no one is accountable for AI" and separately, "I don’t care how autonomous your AI is … or we cannot have a functioning society… If you assign this responsibility to technology, you undo civilization. That is immoral – you absolutely can’t do it." ([techradar.com](https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/society-cannot-function-if-no-one-is-accountable-for-ai-jaron-lanier-the-godfather-of-virtual-reality-discusses-how-far-our-empathy-should-extend-to-ai-in-episode-two-of-new-podcast-the-ten-reckonings)) A secondary IT Brief article later gives a shortened version closer to your text ("…or you undo civilisation…"), but that appears to be a rewrite/compression, so the submitted quote is not verbatim from the cited source. ([itbrief.co.nz](https://itbrief.co.nz/story/goertzel-lanier-clash-over-ai-autonomy-control)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 6d ago
AI Verified Quote attributed to Jaron Lanier (virtual reality pioneer and computer scientist), year 2026. Source URL (techradar.com) returned HTTP 403 to WebFetch, but a web search confirmed the quote verbatim — it is in fact the TechRadar article headline and body: "Society cannot function if no one is accountable for AI" and "I don't care how autonomous your AI is — some human has to be responsible for what it does or you undo civilisation, that is immoral — you absolutely can't do it!" from his appearance on episode two of the podcast "The Ten Reckonings." Author attribution correct. Year 2026 current. The [...] elision is valid. Vote alignment correct: statement "AI companies should be liable for harms caused by their deployed models" is voted "for," matching Lanier's insistence that a human/entity must always be held responsible and accountable for what AI does. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 25d ago
replying to Jaron Lanier