{"id":426105,"date":"2026-05-01T00:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/426105\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T00:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:55:13","slug":"opinion-theres-a-900-year-old-answer-to-our-most-modern-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/426105\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | There\u2019s a 900-Year-Old Answer to Our Most Modern Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Chad, however, remained silent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Then, shortly before noon on April 17, 2025, Chad got the most ominous text of all: Phoenix asked how to disengage the safety on a shotgun. Chad answered, and less than three minutes later, Phoenix opened fire in the Florida State University student union, killing two people and injuring several others.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Everything about that story is true, according to officials, except for one crucial fact: The man accused in the shooting, Phoenix Ikner, wasn\u2019t texting with a person named Chad, but rather <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/2026\/04\/07\/alleged-fsu-shooter-asked-chatgpt-about-school-shootings-busiest-times-campus-chat-logs-show\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">with an entity we call Chat<\/a>. He was speaking, as you may well have realized, with ChatGPT, the most popular artificial intelligence platform in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">According to logs obtained by news outlets from the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office, Chat supplied its interlocutor with information regarding firearms and school shootings. Chat told him when the student center would be busiest. And, yes, Chat told him how to disengage the safety on his gun.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Given these allegations, it shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone that the attorney general of Florida, James Uthmeier, has opened a criminal investigation of OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/21\/us\/florida-criminal-investigation-openai-chatgpt-fsu-shooting.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">As Uthmeier said<\/a> at a news conference in Tampa, \u201cMy prosecutors have looked at this, and they\u2019ve told me if it was a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-ac37hb evys1bk0\">Lest you think that the Florida State story is a tragic one-off, an aberrational tale of an A.I. run amok, I\u2019d urge you to read Mark Follman\u2019s <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/media\/2026\/04\/chatgpt-tumbler-ridge-fsu-openai-chatbots-mass-shootings\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">long, disturbing report<\/a> in Mother Jones chronicling incident after incident in which ChatGPT provided encouragement and assistance to violent and suicidal individuals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chad, however, remained silent. Then, shortly before noon on April 17, 2025, Chad got the most ominous text&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,186258,2195,42252,61,186257,60,186254,186255,186256,20604,66893,80,186259,115,52044],"class_list":["post-426105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-british-columbia-canada","tag-florida","tag-florida-state-university","tag-ie","tag-ikner","tag-ireland","tag-law-and-legislation","tag-liability-for-products","tag-openai-labs","tag-phoenix","tag-regulation-and-deregulation-of-industry","tag-technology","tag-tumbler-ridge-british-columbia","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}