Who to Blame When Violence Strikes

When somebody goes on a shooting spree and kills and injures others, who’s to blame? Is it the person who actually committed the violence… or is it a company loaded with hoards of cash who just happened to have a connection with the perpetrator? In today’s society, it seems like it’s the latter.

Families of those injured and killed in a February school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia are suing OpenAI for negligence and providing a dangerously defective version of ChatGPT to the shooter.

The seven suits, filed in a San Francisco federal court, allege that OpenAI failed to take actions that could have prevented injuries and deaths in the shooting. They claim the company failed to report the shooter's conversations with ChatGPT to authorities, and that ChatGPT was a defective product, and didn’t direct her to seek real-world help… which assumes she would have even done so.

Let me state the obvious. ChatGPT is a computer program based on endless algorithms; it is not a person somewhat capable of interpreting human emotions, reasoning, and possible actions. People have a hard enough time with that even when speaking face to face. To expect an inanimate object to determine real-life drama, practical joking, or something entirely different, is completely unreasonable.

There is only one person to blame – the perpetrator! If we’re going to blame a provider of an AI service for failure to report a questionable conversation with a user, then we need to blame everyone that ever associated with that person. Every individual is a product of their environment from the minute they were conceived. None of us are the same. No one shares the exact same life, not even twins. If we blame ChatGPT, then we need to blame parents, teachers, friends, associates, the local barista, and everyone else that should have “known” the shooter was a lunatic.

But those people probably aren’t sitting around a trough full of millions waiting to be financially raped.

It’s time to quit blaming chat bot makers, social media, gun manufacturers, etc., for the violence committed by individuals. Individuals make choices; computers, for better or worse, just spit out data.

OpenAI explained its policy: "When conversations indicate an imminent and credible risk of harm to others, we notify law enforcement." They initially deactivated the account, but the shooter created another account. So at least OpenAI made an attempt, but again, it’s dependent on programming. There aren’t enough humans in the world to monitor every “conversation” with a computer.

OpenAI did admit to not reporting this particular case (perhaps not seen as imminent and credible), and apologized for not doing so. The world is full of empty threats. If every empty threat was reported, the real threats would likely get lost – like finding a needle in a haystack. I sympathize with the families who lost loved ones. However, AI creators and algorithms aren’t people.

But they do have money, and since perpetrators usually don’t, “Well, someone has to pay.” The need to benefit off tragedy, via someone not the actual perpetrator, is truly sad.

Source used: National Pubic Radio