1. Miner mines iron
2. Manufacturer makes knife
3. Retailer sells knife to person A
4. Person A kills person B with the knife
I think most people living in the US would be ok with the general idea that person A should be held responsible for killing person B, and not miner/manufacturer/retailer. Perhaps I'm wrong.
Would you consider the knife retailer equivalent to the torture rack manufacture in your example?
Not GP, but doesn't
>> I think it's pretty straightforward to assign more or less blame depending on the specialization of the technology for the purpose of doing something evil
answer your question?
I think that "depending on the specialization of the technology for the purpose of doing something evil" merely shifts the question to multiple questions:
1. What does "specialization of the technology" mean?
2. Can technologies have multiple specializations?
3. What does evil mean?
4. Even if we had a perfect translation between "specialization" and "evil," if a technology has multiple specializations, which controls? The most evil? Does this require us to predict which specializations are most likely to be used?
However, to my knowledge, neither of "accessory to murder" and "criminal organization" have been applied to the manufacturer of a legal-to-own object.
This comment is meant to make an analogy between the manufacturer of a legal-to-own object and the publishers of an ML algorithm.
The result that most of technological society would have a small amount of ambient guilt is not entirely absurd; the idea that industry is not sharply, but diffusely and slightly evil is common in fiction and many people's intuition.