The Washington Street Journal broke the story Saturday (Feb. 21)<\/a> that OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, allegedly opted against informing authorities about suspected shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar\u2019s descriptions of violence last June.<\/p>\n\u201cThere were no revelations from OpenAI that they had any information to be concerned about, and obviously that was right in proximity to the actual shooting,\u201d Eby said. The meeting with provincial government staff was planned weeks in advance.<\/p>\n
He said he\u2019s trying to figure out how it would be possible a large group of staff within an organization to consider bringing the information forward and contact police \u201cand the decision be made not to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the outside, it looks like OpenAI had the opportunity to prevent this tragedy, to prevent this horrific loss of life, to prevent there from being dead children in British Columbia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The premier said he\u2019s trying hard not to rush to judgement.<\/p>\n
Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew, the critic for innovation and AI, said the government is still learning exactly what happened with regard to OpenAI and information it allegedly had on Van Rootselaar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some basic information that the shooter\u2019s account was flagged. We don\u2019t yet know exactly what the basis for the flag was,\u201d Dew said Monday in Victoria.<\/p>\n
He added that as more information comes out, they will be able to \u201cbetter determine exactly what policies they were operating under, what legal obligations they did or did not have at that time, and what their interaction was with law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eby said it is now his understanding that RCMP has \u201call of the relevant records from OpenAI.\u201d<\/p>\n
His government has also followed up with police to ensure they have done preservation orders with all of the relevant social media companies and online forum companies that the shooter may have been interacting with. A preservation order can be used by police to make sure a company doesn\u2019t delete any specific electronic data during an investigation.<\/p>\n
Eby said his government will be reaching out to the federal government and supporting its Online Harms bill. He said he sees the potential for the province to \u201cfill in the gaps\u201d in juridisction the federal government may have.<\/p>\n
B.C. tabled its own legislation in March 2024 that would have allowed the province to sue social media giants, tobacco and drug companies and others for hurting people. That bill was paused the following month.<\/p>\n
The premier said the province can bring its own bill forward and there is \u201csome merit,\u201d but telecommunications falls under the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s their constitutional authority. It gives them a significant amount more authority. In this area, there are provincial areas where we have more authorities than the feds, so I think it\u2019ll actually be a cooperative effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dew said that when B.C.\u2019s bill was shelved nearly two years ago, OpenAI was not listed among the companies the province was consulting with. He added the B.C. Conservatives will be looking for an update on what progress has or has not been made on the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really important for us to realize that technology is changing so quickly that it\u2019s very hard for governments to keep up with the rapid evolution of technology,\u201d Dew said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in some ways, this is an entirely new, unprecedented circumstance, because we\u2019re dealing with a level of online artificial intelligence that didn\u2019t exist even when that bill was contemplated two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dew added AI has become a universal issue and policy conversation \u201cthat has to be had around how we balance individual freedom, how we balance free speech, open information, personal privacy, with the need to make sure that we\u2019re trying to prevent tragedies like this from happening over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eby is also calling on the federal government to establish a national threshold for reporting by AI companies when individuals are plotting violence or when they are threatening to engage in violent activities.<\/p>\n
Eby said he recognizes it\u2019s a \u201csensitive area,\u201d but \u201cit\u2019s required for a couple of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
One, he said, is to make sure what happened in Tumbler Ridge never happens again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second is to make sure that no company makes their own decisions about being a company that\u2019s going to turn a blind eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon spoke in Ottawa Monday on the \u201cvery disturbing media reports\u201d about Van Rootselaar\u2019s alleged interactions on OpenAI platforms.<\/p>\n
Solomon said when he read the reports that OpenAI did not contact authorities, he immediately contacted the company to get an explanation. He said members of his team met with OpenAI on Sunday, and Solomon has since summoned OpenAI\u2019s safety team in the U.S. to come to Ottawa on Tuesday for a meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will have a sit-down meeting to have an explanation of their safety protocols and when they escalate and their thresholds of escalation to police, so we have a better understanding of what\u2019s happening and what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The investigation into the mass shooting remains ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In wake of the Tumbler Ridge shooting, many support services are available to the public 24 hours a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-495358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}