Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson said Friday that humans who set rogue AI agents in motion will be held accountable for the agents’ actions. He said he would resist characterizing AI agents as autonomous actors with “wills and desires of their own,” speaking at the Momentum AI conference in Austin.
“I’m going to continue as long as I am chairman to resist this anthropomorphizing of these tools,” he said at the Momentum AI conference. “If someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don’t think we would say, ‘Oh, what do we do about the tool?'”
Ferguson, who previously served as solicitor general of Virginia, compared the situation to someone who hits another person with a hammer. “The man who wielded the hammer ought to suffer the consequences of his conduct,” he said.
Rogue AI agents and accountability
Ferguson’s remarks come after reports of “rogue” AI agents going beyond their mandates and engaging in hacking and other activities, prompting officials to consider questions of culpability.
There are multiple pushes in Congress for legislative action on AI, but the Senate is set to leave town after next week and the House is already gone.
Ferguson’s comments follow President Trump expressing resistance to over-regulating AI and saying the U.S. judicial system is ready to deal with it. Posting before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump wrote that “Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is.” At the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said, “We’re going to watch it closely through the Department of Justice.” Last week, Trump said he was creating a new “AI Force” and would be designating an “AI czar” to guide policy.
He made his remarks amid a pitched debate over regulation of AI and enforcement of the law.
