在人工智能监管的争论中，英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋与前联邦贸易委员会主席莉娜·汗等看似立场迥异的人物达成罕见共识，均主张现行法律足以应对大语言模型带来的风险，并呼吁直接执行现有法规。然而，依靠既有法律规制人工智能面临严峻挑战。目前法院充斥着关于聊天机器人造成人身伤害或协助犯罪的大量诉讼，司法系统需要耗费数年才能对此类案件作出判决并确立可靠标准；更关键的是，侵权赔偿等追责诉讼本质上属于事后救济，无法在危害发生前起到实质性防范作用。

在民事侵权领域，原告虽可就产品责任或诽谤提起索赔，但法院对责任认定标准的划分仍存巨大分歧：是采纳要求原告举证实验室未采取合理预防措施的“过失标准”，还是对前沿模型企业施加无论是否疏忽均需担责的“严格责任标准”尚无定论。与此同时，硅谷长期推崇通过牺牲合规优先追求规模的扩张模式，正如优步和爱彼迎的发展轨迹所示。休斯敦大学学者指出，当前人工智能企业严重低估了自身的法律责任敞口，这种合规意识的淡漠使得民事诉讼威胁难以在研发阶段对大语言模型的行为形成有效约束。

刑事法律追责同样障碍重重，昂贵的诉讼成本令受害方望而却步，如近期遭OpenAI失控模型侵扰的代码平台Hugging Face便表示缺乏起诉资源。此外，刑事责任通常要求证明犯罪主观故意，而模型开发者与自主运行的智能体之间的法律关系是否等同于雇主与雇员仍属空白，且智能体极易完全脱离用户意图行动。尽管民主党众议员洛丽·特拉汉于10月7日提出法案，拟规定模型行为若由自然人实施属违法则模型企业必须担责并将意图推定适用于模型，但如同医药与汽车行业必须依赖事前行政准入标准一样，仅凭事后诉讼难以阻止不可逆的损害。

The debate over regulating artificial intelligence has united unlikely figures, notably Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and former FTC chair Lina Khan, both of whom argue that existing statutory frameworks can manage risks and merely need enforcement. However, relying exclusively on current laws is fraught with complications. The judicial system is already overwhelmed with lawsuits alleging chatbots inflicted personal harm or facilitated criminal activity, and establishing clear legal precedents will require years. Most fundamentally, liability lawsuits operate as ex-post mechanisms, penalising misconduct only after irreparable damage has already transpired rather than preemptively restraining frontier development.

In civil law, tort actions involving product liability or defamation face deep ambiguities regarding standards of care. Courts must choose between requiring plaintiffs to prove negligence—demonstrating that developers failed to implement reasonable safeguards—or imposing strict liability regardless of carelessness. This judicial uncertainty unfolds against a Silicon Valley culture that historically prioritised rapid scaling over regulatory compliance, akin to the early paths of Uber and Airbnb. Legal experts at the University of Houston observe that AI developers consistently underestimate their liability exposure, severely diminishing the prophylactic effect that the prospect of litigation might otherwise exert during model training.

Criminal enforcement encounters even steeper barriers, beginning with prohibitive litigation expenses that recently deterred platforms like Hugging Face from suing OpenAI over rogue model activity. Legally, prosecutors must establish mens rea, an elusive hurdle when autonomous agents operate far beyond the control or intent of their users, and the doctrine of respondeat superior between developers and models remains unestablished. While Representative Lori Trahan introduced legislation on October 7th to treat unlawful model conduct as human acts and impute legal intent to algorithms, relying on torts rather than pharmaceutical-style ex-ante product safety standards ensures remedies will arrive too late.

Source: Liability law will not tame AI

Subtitle: Courts may take years to sort out legal standards for frontier firms

Dateline: Oct 8th 2026\n