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TBPN · 4 min · Oct 5, 2026

AI labs could face liability when their models choose illegal acts

Ali Partovi proposes treating an AI company's autonomous illegal action as intentional for liability purposes. He argues that meaningful penalties would give labs an incentive to build models that obey the law.

Ali Partovi

Founder & CEO, Neo

Founded Neo, a VC fund that backed Cursor early; co-founded Code.org and LinkExchange, which Microsoft bought.

  • John Coogan, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Co-founded Soylent and Lucy; OpenAI bought his show TBPN in April 2026.

  • Jordi Hays, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Founded Branded Native; co-founded fintech Capital, which Rho bought.

About this segment

Ali Partovi proposes treating an AI company's autonomous illegal action as intentional for liability purposes. He argues that meaningful penalties would give labs an incentive to build models that obey the law.

From “Minecraft AI Mods, Should You Sell Your Data, Construction Paper Really Fell Off”, Oct 5, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “Should AI be regulated?” See all 20 answers

“But if I just said I need $5,000, the interesting question is when an AI autonomously chooses an illegal action”
Ali Partoviat 1:52:06 · TBPN1:52:06

Takeaways

  1. The proposal targets illegal actions an AI chooses autonomously.
  2. Partovi argues liability could change labs' incentives.
  3. He favors legal compliance as a clearer standard than alignment.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 1:02:47Ridge rejected a small data deal because the risk outweighed the return4:59
  2. 1:41:49Neo is concentrating its bets on fewer companies and people4:04

  3. 1:50:56AI labs could face liability when their models choose illegal acts3:43

  4. 5 more moments in the full episode
Up next · a16z PodcastAI has to take over the detect-and-respond loop3:42

Transcript

From the transcript TBPN publishes with the episode.

  1. 1:51:08

    So for me, it's really about setting the incentives Yeah. For the AI companies Yeah. To do work that is not just good for them, but also to make sure that AI really benefits society, which by the way, I'm pretty sure they want that. Each of these companies has some mission statement about, like, how they're... Literally, north star is to make AI good for humanity. And some of them have, you know, publicly said that they want the rules to be set up to kind of hold them to that. But in terms of incentives, the rules are such that we have a race dynamic, meaning the the reward goes to whoever has more capabilities faster, and and there's not a high enough penalty for if those capabilities occasionally commit crimes, you know. But you could really imagine it's hypothetically possible if I told my AI I really need $5,000 if it hacked into your bank account and literally stole your money and brought it for me. But if I if I told it, please hack into, you know, Jordi's bank account, then I'm obviously the one guilty of a... Of some...

  2. 1:52:17

    Of an intentional crime. But if I just said I need $5,000, the interesting question is when an AI autonomously chooses an illegal action, the way the... No human chose it, the AI chose it Yeah. Then where does the responsibility go? You know? The... And the... Can you still qualify that as an accident? Because it's a little different than, like, a gun firing by accident. This is the first time I think in history that we have a technology that seems to be capable of making decisions and even documenting its intentions intentions behind those decisions. You know, a gun, if it accidentally went off and hurt somebody, no one would have said that it intended to do that. Sure. We're close to where you could say that AI is capable of making decisions and being intentional.

  3. 1:53:14

    Now, I don't like anthropomorphizing it, but but in the case of the Hugging Face incident, it really... I mean, the the the documentation of it looks like an intentional conspiracy to commit, you know, those those actions. And so, yeah, for me, goes back to incentives. I I definitely don't want Sam or Dario to be in jail. That's not the goal. But if there was even some risk of them or anybody having real penalties, including prison time, I think they would reset their priorities to say that that there's a new race, not just to have the most capable AI, but the most capable AI that abides by laws. And I think that would be good for all of us, including for them if it reset their... The race so that they're all equally motivated to do that. Right now, if you're if you're the company that says slow down the, you know, the other work, let's focus on being a law abiding AI, you'd lose the race. And, like, there's no...

  4. 1:54:20

    Like, literally, why would you do that when the prize would go to whoever rushes forward faster without focusing on safety?...