Speaking of AI Liability

The discussion at today's AI Liability conference reminds me of one of my favorite stanzas from a poem (Kipling's Hymn of the Breaking Strain):

The careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff — the Man!

The rest of the poem, to be sure, isn't about tort liability.