British Columbia is taking OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman to court over the company’s alleged role in a mass shooting that shattered a small Canadian community.
Niki Sharma, the Deputy Premier and Attorney General of British Columbia, filed a lawsuit Monday in California to hold OpenAI “accountable for designing a dangerous product, distributing it to every home with internet access, ignoring the warnings of their own safety team, refusing to notify authorities when they knew the shooter was planning gun violence.”
“OpenAI has confirmed that the conversation between ChatGPT and the shooter was so alarming that it triggered an internal review by OpenAI employees,” Sharma said in a press conference earlier on Monday.
“This threat was not reported to the RCMP and was subsequently dismissed,” Sharma added. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is Canada’s federal police force.
According to the lawsuit filing, the February 10 Tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooting killed five students and an education assistant and injured more than 25 people. The 18-year-old shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The lawsuit said that ChatGPT’s features “encouraged, elaborated, and reinforced violent ideation instead of interrupting it or directing the user to real-world help.”
Sharma said that she had not personally reviewed the conversations and said OpenAI is withholding them from the province.
“Publicly, OpenAI has paid lip service to regret, and has promised to make changes,” the lawsuit said.
“Neither OpenAI nor Ms. O’Leary have followed up on these promises, despite public efforts by the Attorney General of British Columbia to engage with them,” the lawsuit added of Ann O’Leary, the vice president of global policy at OpenAI.
According to the lawsuit, British Columbia is seeking to make OpenAI pay for the cost of replacing Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, which was demolished after the attack.
In a statement to Business Insider, an OpenAI spokesperson called the shooting “an unspeakable tragedy.”
“OpenAI remains committed to working collaboratively with government and law enforcement officials, and continuing to advance our ongoing safety work,” the spokesperson said.
The provincial lawsuit is separate from cases brought by survivors and victims’ families. More than 30 such lawsuits had been filed against OpenAI by early September.
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