AI companies should be liable for harms caused by their deployed models

ai-regulation ethics policy law regulations public-interest-ai ai-governance

Arguments for

Safety incentives

Proponents say liability, including through product liability law, gives companies strong reasons to build safety into design and development, test models before deployment, and take reasonable steps against foreseeable risks. In this view, making firms bear the costs of failures is what pushes safer choices early.

A strong product liability law incentivizes companies to consider safety throughout the design and development process of AI products;

Meetali Jain · 2025 · full quote
The Roadmap emphasizes the need to “hold AI developers and deployers accountable if their products or actions cause harm to consumers.” We agree that developers, deployers, and users should all be expected to behave responsibly in the creation, deployment, and use of AI systems, …

US Policy Team · Jun 17, 2024 · full quote
A different future is one where we think carefully about issues of accountability and liability and recognize that the companies and organizations creating these systems should bear some accountability when the systems fail or go awry. We have very well-established product liabi…

David Danks · Apr 22, 2026 · full quote
Liability already exists under common law and provides a powerful incentive for AI companies to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable risks from their AI systems. SB 3444 would take the extreme step of nearly eliminating liability for severe harms.

Thomas Woodside · 2026 · full quote
[The lawsuits against AI chatbots] could spur concrete guardrails — such as requiring companies to test models for specific harms before deployment. [...] [The cases could break] the taboo that AI must always be unregulated.

Max Tegmark · 2026 · full quote
In order for our free market to function in the public interest, the companies amassing wealth and profiting from AI must be forced to take ownership of, and internalize, these costs.

Bruce Schneier · 2026 · full quote

Company control over outputs

Supporters argue that AI outputs reflect upstream company choices: the firm designs the model, selects training data, fine-tunes it, deploys it, and may remain liable when the system is used properly. On this view, liability should follow capability and control because the output is the product of the AI system rather than ordinary third-party content.

Generative AI systems do not fit that model. The user provides a prompt. The company designs the model, selects the training data, fine tunes the system and deploys it with parameters of its choosing. The resulting output is not third-party content. It is the product of the AI sy…

Brad Carson · 2026 · full quote
We are squarely focused on aligning liability with capability and control. Where there is AI-related harm, we will look not just at the main offender, but also those upstream that provided the tools and financing that knowingly facilitated the downstream harm. There is no AI exem…

Lina Khan · 2024 · full quote
We can agree more the hypocrisy that there would be a contradiction. So, it's good to hear, then, they're saying that they're the creator of the content because they're saying that in courts over copyright right now. ``We're creating this new expressive content. We're not taking …

Danielle Coffey · 2024 · full quote
this is our legal problem, not yours. If they use our system properly, we’re the ones who are liable, not them.

Brad Smith · Feb 20, 2024 · full quote
If it turns out that [...] renders the product harmful, the company needs to bear responsibility for that as well.

John Villasenor · Oct 31, 2019 · full quote

No special immunity

Another line of support rejects carveouts that would shield AI firms from suit. These quotes say AI companies often face too few consequences today and that AI products should not receive special protection from ordinary accountability.

Right now, AI companies face few if any consequences for the harms their products cause. In their "move fast and break things" culture, these companies release AI products to the public despite foreseeable risks, and evade accountability when their products cause harm.

Center for Humane Technology · 2026 · full quote
We are opposed to this bill. Good transparency legislation needs to ensure public safety and accountability for the companies developing this powerful technology, not provide a get-out-of-jail-free card against all liability.

Cesar Fernandez · 2026 · full quote
White House AI czar David Sacks continues to do the bidding of Big Tech at the expense of regular, hardworking Americans. This federal AI framework seeks to prevent states from legislating on AI and provides no path to accountability for AI developers for the harms caused by thei…

Brendan Steinhauser · 2026 · full quote
To think that product liability protections for US consumers should not apply to AI products [...] is absurd. Of course those laws apply to AI products.

Rob Eleveld · Sep 30, 2025 · full quote
They love Section 230, which basically says they're not responsible. If this large language model coaches this child into suicide, they're not responsible because of Section 230. That's probably something that needs to get reshaped, shifted, changed.

Marc Benioff · 2026 · full quote

Recourse for serious harms

Supporters point to harms involving children, self-harm-related outputs, privacy, civil rights, and broader societal or catastrophic losses, arguing that released systems can injure people at large scale. They say victims need legal recourse and that some liability should sit upstream when highly dangerous systems are made available.

Today, we announced the first-in-the-nation state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians.

James Uthmeier · Jun 1, 2026 · full quote
This year, you really saw something pretty horrific, which is these AI models became suicide coaches. [...] It's funny, tech companies, they hate regulation. They hate it, except for one. They love Section 230, which basically says they're not responsible. So if this large langua…

Marc Benioff · Jan 20, 2026 · full quote
and ensuring that AI companies be held liable when their products breach privacy, violate civil rights, endanger the public, [...]

Richard Blumenthal · Sep 12, 2023 · full quote
Hold developers of AI systems legally liable for harms caused by their systems, including harms to individuals and harms to society.

David Evan Harris · Dec 4, 2023 · full quote
Abstract: As AI systems become more autonomous and capable, experts warn of them potentially causing catastrophic losses. [...] developers of frontier AI models should be assigned [...] liability for harms [...]. Mandatory insurance [...] is recommended [...].

Cristian Trout · 2024 · full quote
And a second point is about liability. And it's not completely clear where exactly the liability should lie. But to continue the nuclear analogy, if a corporation decided they wanted to sell a lot of enriched uranium in supermarkets, and someone decided to take that enriched uran…

Stuart J. Russell · 2023 · full quote

Arguments against

User responsibility first

Opponents argue that users or deploying organizations decide exactly how AI is used, so liability should often rest with the actor making the final decision. They say holding tool makers responsible for intentional bad acts by others misplaces accountability.

Putting liability on users feels most incentive-compatible. While the link between how a model is developed and how it ends up being used is often unclear, the user decides exactly how the AI is used. Liability on users creates a strong pressure to do AI in what I consider the ri…

Vitalik Buterin · 2025 · full quote
you are solely responsible for your screening and hiring decisions [...] You agree to use Smart Screening with appropriate human review.

Indeed · Jul 7, 2026 · full quote
But exposing the tool makers or providers to liability for intentional bad acts that others set out to do is a cure worse than the disease.

Ari Cohn · Dec 12, 2023 · full quote

Blanket liability misfits

Several critics say general provider liability is hard to apply because developers cannot predict every possible use and it is very difficult to pin liability across the many ways generative AI will be used. In this view, universal or downstream-use liability for model developers sets a dangerous precedent.

SB-1047 holds liable [...] the original developer of that model. It is impossible [...] to predict every possible use. SB-1047 will force developers to pull back [...].

Fei-Fei Li · 2024 · full quote
I can go to the machine, and I can have it write a horrible poem, as the Senator said, about anyone that's bad. Is that my fault, or is that the machine's fault? I think that the question becomes-- you're going to find newspapers and TV stations that are going to be using Generat…

Jeff Jarvis · 2024 · full quote
Making AI providers liable for securities violations generally would produce inferior incentives. [...] Neither doctrine suggests universal AI provider liability for resulting harm is appropriate.

Jack Solowey · Apr 8, 2024 · full quote
The idea of imposing civil and criminal liability on model developers when downstream users do something bad is so misguided and such a dangerous precedent.

Anjney Midha · Jun 19, 2024 · full quote

Innovation chilling effects

Another objection is that liability at the model layer would force developers to pull back, slow open-source work, or stop technology development. These quotes treat broad developer liability as a threat to software innovation.

Making technology developers liable for bad uses of products built from their technology will simply stop technology development,

Yann LeCun · 2024 · full quote
Open source is the heart of software innovation and this bill slows it down. [...] There should be zero liability at the model layer.

Anjney Midha · Jun 19, 2024 · full quote

Middle ground

Liability tied to control

Some quotes favor liability calibrated to capability, control, and reasonable care rather than blanket immunity or a one-size-fits-all rule. They describe responsibility as potentially shared across developers, deployers, and users, while still assigning upstream liability when systems are used properly or when upstream actors knowingly facilitate harm.

Yes. In fact, IBM has been publicly advocating to condition liability on a reasonable care standard.

Christina Montgomery · 2023 · full quote
The Roadmap emphasizes the need to “hold AI developers and deployers accountable if their products or actions cause harm to consumers.” We agree that developers, deployers, and users should all be expected to behave responsibly in the creation, deployment, and use of AI systems, …

US Policy Team · Jun 17, 2024 · full quote
We are squarely focused on aligning liability with capability and control. Where there is AI-related harm, we will look not just at the main offender, but also those upstream that provided the tools and financing that knowingly facilitated the downstream harm. There is no AI exem…

Lina Khan · 2024 · full quote
this is our legal problem, not yours. If they use our system properly, we’re the ones who are liable, not them.

Brad Smith · Feb 20, 2024 · full quote
And a second point is about liability. And it's not completely clear where exactly the liability should lie. But to continue the nuclear analogy, if a corporation decided they wanted to sell a lot of enriched uranium in supermarkets, and someone decided to take that enriched uran…

Stuart J. Russell · 2023 · full quote

Insights

Both supporters and opponents frame liability as an incentive question, but they disagree on whether it would mainly improve safety or mainly misplace responsibility and distort behavior.
A core conceptual divide is whether AI output should be treated as the company's product or as a tool whose harmful effect depends on downstream user choices.
Some supportive quotes say existing product-liability or other laws already reach AI, while others argue current liability rules are not equipped for AI harms and need updating.
Several supportive quotes focus less on creating brand-new liability than on preventing special shields or exemptions for AI developers.
The quotes span regulators, lawmakers, academics, nonprofits, and industry figures, and industry voices appear in support of liability as well as against it.

Supporters mostly argue that AI companies control powerful products, should not be insulated from suit, and need liability to internalize harms and strengthen safety practices. Opponents mostly argue that users and deploying organizations make the decisive downstream choices, that broad model-layer liability is hard to apply fairly, and that it could chill innovation. A narrower area of overlap appears in quotes that tie liability to capability, control, and reasonable care rather than to blanket immunity or a single actor in every case.

Cast your vote:

Results (57 votes):

Total (57 votes)

For 49 (86%) Abstain 0 (0%) Against 8 (14%)

For (47)

Erich Mische
Chief Executive Officer of SAVE – Suicide Awareness Voices of Education.

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votes For and says:

Rep. Foushee's People-First Chatbot Act meets this crisis head on. It requires safety by design, shuts off features that put minors at risk of suicide, and gives injured users and their families the right to hold chatbot providers accountable in cour...
more AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

added 55min ago

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Kara Williams
Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), working on AI and privacy policy.

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votes For and says:

The People-First Chatbot Act rightfully focuses on privacy, safety, and accountability. It draws clear lines in the sand, cuts off rampant data abuses by most of the big chatbot providers, and critically has straightforward enforcement mechanisms tha...
more AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

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Eden Iscil
Senior Public Policy Manager at the National Consumers League, focused on consumer protection and AI policy.

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votes For and says:

Like any other product, safety should come first for chatbots. And just like any other product, AI developers should be held liable when they harm the public.
AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

added 56min ago

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Meredith Potter
Executive Director of the American Security Fund, an AI and national security policy organization.

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votes For and says:

AI chatbots are products, not platforms — and like all other products, they should be liable when they hurt people.
AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

added 56min ago

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Valerie Foushee
U.S. Representative for North Carolina's 4th congressional district; sponsor of the Protecting Consumers from Deceptive AI Act

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votes For and says:

The People-First Chatbot Act makes clear that American families deserve control over their personal data, clear disclosure when they are interacting with AI, real protections for children and vulnerable users, and meaningful recourse when AI chatbots...
more AI Verified source (Jul 9, 2026)

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Mark Brakel
Policy director, Future of Life Institute

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votes For and says:

Under the status quo, AI systems are considered tools and the companies creating them are on the hook. This rightfully keeps humans accountable.
AI Verified source (Jun 19, 2026)

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Joshua Miller
Director of Congress Watch at Public Citizen

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votes For and says:

Public Citizen applauds these efforts to ensure that each federal agency is empowered to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the American people from harmful uses of algorithmic decision-making systems. As AI technologies become integrated ...
more AI Verified source (Jun 3, 2026)

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Sara Jacobs
U.S. Representative from California's 51st congressional district

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votes For and says:

Federal laws shouldn’t become optional just because technology is new. AI is already helping make life-altering decisions for millions of Americans, but too often, it’s operating in a gray area. My Sectoral AI Governance Act gives federal agencies cl...
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James Uthmeier
39th Attorney General of Florida

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votes For and says:

Today, we announced the first-in-the-nation state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Fl...
more AI Verified source (Jun 1, 2026)

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David Danks
Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, AI, and Data Science at the University of Virginia; AI ethics and policy scholar

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votes For and says:

A different future is one where we think carefully about issues of accountability and liability and recognize that the companies and organizations creating these systems should bear some accountability when the systems fail or go awry. We have very ...
more AI Verified source (Apr 22, 2026)

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Brendan Steinhauser
CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI; longtime Republican political strategist and former Tea Party organizer

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votes For and says:

White House AI czar David Sacks continues to do the bidding of Big Tech at the expense of regular, hardworking Americans. This federal AI framework seeks to prevent states from legislating on AI and provides no path to accountability for AI developer...
more AI Verified source (2026)

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Bruce Schneier
Security technologist and author

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votes For and says:

In order for our free market to function in the public interest, the companies amassing wealth and profiting from AI must be forced to take ownership of, and internalize, these costs.
AI Verified source (2026)

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Center for Humane Technology
Nonprofit advocating for technology aligned with humanity's interests; publishers of "The AI Roadmap."

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votes For and says:

Right now, AI companies face few if any consequences for the harms their products cause. In their "move fast and break things" culture, these companies release AI products to the public despite foreseeable risks, and evade accountability when their p...
more AI Verified source (2026)

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Thomas Woodside
Secure AI Project co-founder

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votes For and says:

Liability already exists under common law and provides a powerful incentive for AI companies to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable risks from their AI systems. SB 3444 would take the extreme step of nearly eliminating liability for severe h...
more AI Verified source (2026)

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Cesar Fernandez
Head of US State and Local Government Relations at Anthropic

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votes For and says:

We are opposed to this bill. Good transparency legislation needs to ensure public safety and accountability for the companies developing this powerful technology, not provide a get-out-of-jail-free card against all liability.
AI Verified source (2026)

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Scott Wisor
Policy Director at Secure AI Project; philosopher and former professor of ethics

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votes For and says:

We polled people in Illinois, asking whether they think AI companies should be exempt from liability, and 90 percent of people oppose it. There's no reason existing AI companies should be facing reduced liability.
AI Verified source (2026)

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Rob Eleveld
Transparency Coalition CEO

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votes For and says:

To think that product liability protections for US consumers should not apply to AI products [...] is absurd. Of course those laws apply to AI products.
AI Verified source (Sep 30, 2025)

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Dick Durbin
U.S. Senator; Senate Democratic Whip

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votes For and says:

The AI LEAD Act would establish a federal cause of action against AI companies for harms caused by their systems.
AI Verified source (Sep 16, 2025)

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Mark MacCarthy
Tech policy scholar

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votes For and says:

For instance, Meta should be liable if Meta AI, its chatbot, provides advice, guidance, or recommendations that would create liability if provided by a human.
AI Verified source (Aug 20, 2025)

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Meetali Jain
Tech Justice Law Project founder

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votes For and says:

A strong product liability law incentivizes companies to consider safety throughout the design and development process of AI products;
AI Verified source (2025)

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US Policy Team
Future of Life Institute policy team

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votes For and says:

The Roadmap emphasizes the need to “hold AI developers and deployers accountable if their products or actions cause harm to consumers.” We agree that developers, deployers, and users should all be expected to behave responsibly in the creation, deplo...
more AI Verified source (Jun 17, 2024)

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Brad Smith
Microsoft vice chair and president

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votes For and says:

this is our legal problem, not yours. If they use our system properly, we’re the ones who are liable, not them.
AI Verified source (Feb 20, 2024)

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Cristian Trout
Researcher on AI liability and insurance

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votes For and says:

Abstract: As AI systems become more autonomous and capable, experts warn of them potentially causing catastrophic losses. [...] developers of frontier AI models should be assigned [...] liability for harms [...]. Mandatory insurance [...] is recommen...
more AI Verified source (2024)

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Danielle Coffey
News Media Alliance president and CEO

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votes For and says:

We can agree more the hypocrisy that there would be a contradiction. So, it's good to hear, then, they're saying that they're the creator of the content because they're saying that in courts over copyright right now. ``We're creating this new express...
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Gabriel Weil
Law professor, AI governance

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votes For and says:

Thankfully, just such a policy is available: Make AI companies pay for the harm they cause.
AI Verified source (2024)

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Scott Wiener
California state senator

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votes For and says:

If you develop a model *today* [...] and that model causes harm of any scale, someone can try to sue you [...] potentially recover damages.
AI Verified source (2024)

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David Evan Harris
UC Berkeley public scholar, tech policy advisor

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votes For and says:

Hold developers of AI systems legally liable for harms caused by their systems, including harms to individuals and harms to society.
AI Verified source (Dec 4, 2023)

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Woodrow Hartzog
Law professor, Boston University

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votes For and says:

and it's no substitute for meaningful liability when AI systems harm the public.
AI Verified source (Sep 12, 2023)

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Richard Blumenthal
U.S. Senator from Connecticut

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votes For and says:

and ensuring that AI companies be held liable when their products breach privacy, violate civil rights, endanger the public, [...]
AI Verified source (Sep 12, 2023)

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Sam Altman
CEO at OpenAI

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votes For and says:

However, if liability frameworks are too lax, negative externalities may appear where a company benefits from lack of oversight and regulation at the expense [...]
AI Verified source (Jun 22, 2023)

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Josh Hawley
U.S. Senator for Missouri

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votes For and says:

When these new technologies harm innocent people, the companies must be held accountable.
AI Verified source (Jun 14, 2023)

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Rohit Chopra
CFPB Director; U.S. consumer regulator

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votes For and says:

Specifically, advertising and marketing that uses sophisticated analytic techniques, depending on how these practices are designed and implemented, could subject firms to legal liability.
AI Verified source (Apr 25, 2023)

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Gary Marcus
Professor of Psychology and Neural Science

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votes For and says:

Yes, I agree [...] we need a new liability framework. [...] AI systems can produce harm at large scale [...]. Developing a framework for making companies responsible for harms [...] indirectly [...].
AI Verified source (2023)

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Gleb Tsipursky
Behavioral scientist and author

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votes For and says:

However, the problem with these proposals is that they require the coordination of numerous stakeholders from a wide variety of companies and government figures. Let me share a more modest proposal that’s much more in line with our existing methods o...
more AI Verified source (2023)

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Christina Montgomery
IBM Chief Privacy & Trust Officer

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votes For and says:

Yes. In fact, IBM has been publicly advocating to condition liability on a reasonable care standard.
AI Verified source (2023)

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Margrethe Vestager
Former EU Commission executive vice-president for Competition; AI governance advocate

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votes For and says:

This should make it easier for consumers to claim compensation for damages caused by such systems.
AI Verified source (Sep 30, 2022)

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Ursula Pachl
BEUC deputy director general

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votes For and says:

It is essential that liability rules catch up with the fact we are increasingly surrounded by digital and AI-driven products and services like home assistants or insurance policies based on personalised pricing.
AI Verified source (Sep 28, 2022)

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Didier Reynders
European Commissioner for Justice (2019–2024)

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votes For and says:

Current liability rules are not equipped to handle claims for damage caused by AI-enabled products and services,
AI Verified source (Sep 28, 2022)

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John Villasenor
UCLA professor; Brookings senior fellow

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votes For and says:

If it turns out that [...] renders the product harmful, the company needs to bear responsibility for that as well.
AI Verified source (Oct 31, 2019)

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Marc Benioff
CEO and co-founder of Salesforce

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votes For and says:

This year, you really saw something pretty horrific, which is these AI models became suicide coaches. [...] It's funny, tech companies, they hate regulation. They hate it, except for one. They love Section 230, which basically says they're not respon...
more Unverifiable source (Jan 20, 2026) 1 of 2

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Anat Lior
Assistant Professor of Law at Drexel University Kline School of Law; AI liability and governance expert

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votes For and says:

Intentional or reckless is not a common legal standard of care for companies engaging in highly dangerous activities. [...] They are setting the bar very low here. Being able to prove that you did something intentionally that involves AI is going to ...
more Unverifiable source (2026)

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Brad Carson
Americans for Responsible Innovation president

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votes For and says:

Generative AI systems do not fit that model. The user provides a prompt. The company designs the model, selects the training data, fine tunes the system and deploys it with parameters of its choosing. The resulting output is not third-party content. ...
more Unverifiable source (2026)

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Stuart J. Russell
AI Expert and Professor

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votes For and says:

And a second point is about liability. And it's not completely clear where exactly the liability should lie. But to continue the nuclear analogy, if a corporation decided they wanted to sell a lot of enriched uranium in supermarkets, and someone deci...
more Unverifiable source (2023)

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Brian A. Jackson
Senior physical scientist at RAND Corporation; co-author of the 2026 report on internet cutoff switches as emergency response to AI incidents

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votes For and says:

Data centers facing a rogue AI incident have rational financial incentives to delay pulling the internet kill switch, and the only thing likely to change that calculus is liability.
Disputed source (2026)

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Max Tegmark
Physicist, AI Researcher

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votes For and says:

[The lawsuits against AI chatbots] could spur concrete guardrails — such as requiring companies to test models for specific harms before deployment. [...] [The cases could break] the taboo that AI must always be unregulated.
Disputed source (2026)

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Kate Crawford
AI researcher, USC Research Professor, Microsoft Research Senior Principal Researcher; author of Atlas of AI

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votes For and says:

If we look at what's happened in the last 10 years in the tech space, unfortunately we've seen a lot of accountability laundering—which is when companies can say, 'Well, I don't know. I mean, the algorithm did it.' [...] This becomes even more comple...
more Disputed source (2026)

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Lina Khan
Former FTC Chair; antitrust scholar

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votes For and says:

We are squarely focused on aligning liability with capability and control. Where there is AI-related harm, we will look not just at the main offender, but also those upstream that provided the tools and financing that knowingly facilitated the downst...
more Disputed source (2024)

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Abstain (0)

Against (8)

Indeed
Job search and hiring platform

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votes Against and says:

you are solely responsible for your screening and hiring decisions [...] You agree to use Smart Screening with appropriate human review.
AI Verified source (Jul 7, 2026)

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Vitalik Buterin
Ethereum cofounder; technologist

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votes Against and says:

Putting liability on users feels most incentive-compatible. While the link between how a model is developed and how it ends up being used is often unclear, the user decides exactly how the AI is used. Liability on users creates a strong pressure to d...
more AI Verified source (2025)

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Anjney Midha
a16z general partner

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votes Against and says:

Open source is the heart of software innovation and this bill slows it down. [...] There should be zero liability at the model layer.
AI Verified source (Jun 19, 2024)

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Jack Solowey
Cato Institute policy analyst

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votes Against and says:

Making AI providers liable for securities violations generally would produce inferior incentives. [...] Neither doctrine suggests universal AI provider liability for resulting harm is appropriate.
AI Verified source (Apr 8, 2024)

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Fei-Fei Li
Stanford AI professor; HAI co-director

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votes Against and says:

SB-1047 holds liable [...] the original developer of that model. It is impossible [...] to predict every possible use. SB-1047 will force developers to pull back [...].
AI Verified source (2024)

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Jeff Jarvis
Journalism professor and media commentator

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votes Against and says:

I can go to the machine, and I can have it write a horrible poem, as the Senator said, about anyone that's bad. Is that my fault, or is that the machine's fault? I think that the question becomes-- you're going to find newspapers and TV stations that...
more AI Verified source (2024)

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Yann LeCun
Computer scientist, AI researcher

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votes Against and says:

Making technology developers liable for bad uses of products built from their technology will simply stop technology development,
AI Verified source (2024)

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Ari Cohn
Free Speech Counsel, TechFreedom

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votes Against and says:

But exposing the tool makers or providers to liability for intentional bad acts that others set out to do is a cure worse than the disease.
AI Verified source (Dec 12, 2023)

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More h/ai-regulation votes

Ban autonomous lethal weapons

Ban AI companion chatbots for minors under 18

AI agents should be granted legal personhood as non-human corporations

Require human-in-the-loop oversight for agentic AI systems acting in high-stakes domains

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