Can companies like OpenAI keep getting away with what they are doing? An interview with Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout

An interview (my questions in italics) with Zephyr Teachout, attorney, author, and law professor that could not be more timely:

What’s your background, legal and otherwise, and what makes you interested in these issues?

I’m a law professor at Fordham Law School, I’ve drafted tech legislation that has been enacted and plenty that hasn’t, I worked for the New York Attorney General investigating civil violations of other companies, and I have over two decades of experience in studying tech policy and law. I joined the current AI debate because I saw way too many people treating repeat evidence of lawbreaking as wholly unreachable by current law.

Is there any reason to think that OpenAI has broken any laws that (at least in another time) might be enforced? Which and why?

In the world, in general, law enforcement starts when there’s evidence of a crime, and then investigates. A DA doesn’t wait for all the evidence to investigate a crime, and an AG doesn’t wait for all the evidence in the newspaper to investigate illegal behavior: they learn about a car crash or a product that might hurt people or property and then try to find out what happened. There’s plenty of evidence akin to car crashes. There’s actual break-ins and deaths, and companies themselves who are claiming that they are building something unreasonably dangerous.