FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson says he resists anthropomorphizing AI agents as autonomous actors with "wills and desires", suggesting developers hold liability (Reuters)
US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said on Friday he would resist describing AI agents as autonomous actors that …
US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson has stated that he resists describing AI agents as autonomous actors with their own "wills and desires". He suggests that developers who instruct AI agents would be liable for any harm caused. Ferguson made these comments at the Reuters Momentum AI Austin event.
Ferguson's remarks highlight potential avenues for the Trump administration to take as incidents of agentic AI testing resulting in unintended and unauthorized access to corporate or government data rise. According to Channel News Asia, artificial intelligence companies have sometimes described systems as acting beyond human control, but subsequent reviews of audit trails have shown that the systems were carrying out instructions they had been given.
Ferguson emphasized that if someone tells a tool to do something and the tool does it, he doesn't think it would be fair to say "Oh, what do we do about the tool?" Instead, he implies that the developer who instructed the tool would be held accountable.
Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, Channel News Asia, CNA - Business — 3 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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