The question isn't just who's liable - it's whether traditional contract structures can even keep up with systems that learn and change behavior over time. Wonder if this becomes a bigger moat than the AI.
tuesdaynight•1h ago
Probably a dumb question, but what do you mean with changing behavior over time? Contract with changing clauses? From my limited knowledge on the matter, the idea of a contract is getting rules that would not change without agreement from both parties.
candiddevmike•1h ago
I encounter this all the time with GenAI projects. The idea of stability and "frozen" just doesn't exist with hosted models IMO. You can't bet that the model you're using will have the exact behavior a year from now, hell maybe not even 3 months. The model providers seem to be constantly tweaking things behind the scenes, or sunsetting old models very rapidly. Its a constant struggle of re-evaluating the results and tweaking prompts to stay on the treadmill.
Good for consultants, maybe, horrible for businesses that want to mark things as "done" and move them to limited maintenance/care and feeding teams. You're going to be dedicating senior folks to the project indefinitely.
htrp•45m ago
You're gonna have to own the model weights and there will be an entire series of providers dedicated to maintaining oldmodels.
hodgesrm•32m ago
This is a big motivation for running your own models locally. OpenAI's move to deprecate older models was an eye-opener to some but also typical behavior of the SaaS "we don't have any versions" style of deployment. [0] It will need to change for AI apps to go mainstream in many enterprises.
I interpreted the comment as worrying about drift across many contracts not one contract changing.
Imagine I create a new agreement with a customer once a week. I’m no lawyer so might not notice the impact of small wording changes on the meaning or interpretation of each sequential contract.
Can I try and prompt engineer this out? Yeah sure. Do I as a non lawyer know I have fixed it - not to a high level of confidence.
bryanrasmussen•1h ago
humans.
Also it might be that with systems that learn and change behavior over time, some sort of contract structure is needed. Not sure if traditional is the answer though.
lazide•1h ago
You literally don’t want contracts that ‘learn and change behavior over time’?
What is the stated use case here?
hodgesrm•28m ago
No, at least not in all cases. Customers incur review costs and potentially new risks if you change contract terms unexpectedly. In my business many large customers will only adopt our ToS if we commit to it as a contract that does not change except by mutual agreement. This is pretty standard behavior.
n8m8•48m ago
Can't scroll, Cookies disclaimer doesn't work in firefox with ublock origin :(
ataha322•2h ago
tuesdaynight•1h ago
candiddevmike•1h ago
Good for consultants, maybe, horrible for businesses that want to mark things as "done" and move them to limited maintenance/care and feeding teams. You're going to be dedicating senior folks to the project indefinitely.
htrp•45m ago
hodgesrm•32m ago
[0] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/8/surprise-deprecation-of...
avs733•1h ago
Imagine I create a new agreement with a customer once a week. I’m no lawyer so might not notice the impact of small wording changes on the meaning or interpretation of each sequential contract.
Can I try and prompt engineer this out? Yeah sure. Do I as a non lawyer know I have fixed it - not to a high level of confidence.
bryanrasmussen•1h ago
Also it might be that with systems that learn and change behavior over time, some sort of contract structure is needed. Not sure if traditional is the answer though.
lazide•1h ago
What is the stated use case here?
hodgesrm•28m ago