How shifting responsibility for AI harms onto individuals undermines democratic accountability

Shifting responsibility for AI harms onto individual users moves accountability pressure away from companies and governments, undermining democratic accountability. The author says OpenAI only commits to "minimizing" harm to children and personal privacy, Altman argued in a Senate hearing for trusting adult users to use AI responsibly, and when tools are misused, responsibility is largely attributed to users rather than to system capabilities and insufficient guardrails. The piece also cites a review of six major AI companies' privacy policies, research that AI assistants misreport news content 45% of the time, and statistics that nearly half of U.S. employees conceal their use of AI.