Could AI firms be held responsible for mass shootings?
Canadian lawsuits against OpenAI raise questions about liability and duty to warn in the AI industry, say experts.
A series of Canadian lawsuits against OpenAI over its failure to alert authorities to threats made on its ChatGPT platform ahead of one of the worst mass shootings in Canada’s history has renewed scrutiny of AI firms’ privacy and security practices.
The lawsuits have also prompted questions about potential legal accountability over how AI firms’ platforms are used.
The most recent case to be filed is by the province of British Columbia, seven months after 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar – whose ChatGPT account was flagged for conversations that reportedly included gun violence – killed eight people in the small Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge. Victims included Van Rootselaar’s mother and half-brother, as well as five children and an educator at a secondary school. Van Rootselaar died by suicide.
They say the company failed to take action that could have prevented the mass shooting and configured ChatGPT in an unsafe way.