r/news • u/Loud-Ad-2280 • 1d ago
Family of FSU shooting victim files lawsuit alleging ChatGPT helped shooter plan attack
https://abcnews.com/US/family-fsu-shooting-victim-files-lawsuit-alleging-chatgpt/story?id=13284552152
u/SecondChances002 1d ago
ChatGPT, what are some things to do today?
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u/thepianoman456 1d ago
Man… ChatGPT is just melting people’s brains. Imagine handing your free will and creativity over to an app designed by a psychopath.
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u/Spire_Citron 1d ago
Let's not pretend the shooting was all ChatGPT's idea. He acted according to his own free will, using ChatGPT as a tool to help him do it.
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u/thepianoman456 20h ago
Oh I’m sure of that. Just generally speaking on the people who use ChatGPT for literally everything that requires free thought, planning and creativity.
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u/ResplendentShade 1d ago
From the Wikipedia page for the shooting:
Back in Tallahassee, Ikner was a member of the Leon County Sheriff's Office Youth Advisory Council from 2021 to 2022. In later years, he espoused white supremacist, far-right, and homophobic views and was removed from a political group at TSC. He also expressed support for President Donald Trump's agenda. He held a fascination with Adolf Hitler and Nazism, frequently argued with others over politics, and participated in online hate groups. He used an image of Hitler for one gaming account and named another account after the Schutzstaffel.
This is why he went on a mass shooting. I'm not saying that ChatGPT should be absolved of all culpability, but it's frustrating seeing every news article about this case being about the ChatGPT angle. The guy was a far-right online white supremacist, that's the cultural ecosystem which enabled his transformation into a mass murderer, and imo that's what most of the articles about the case should be about.
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u/Four_beastlings 1d ago
Yeah, well, they can't sue Donald Trump for Making Fascism Fashionable Again so they'll have to go for the next best thing
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u/ResplendentShade 1d ago
For sure, I don't blame them, fuck OpenAI I hope they get a lot of money from the lawsuit. I'd just like to see more articles addressing the extremism that inspired the shooting as opposed to the low-key "did he do it because of ChatGPT??" discourse.
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u/jazzhandler 1d ago
At least we’re not blaming heavy metal albums.
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u/SRMort 1d ago
It's harder to play them backwards nowadays.
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u/jazzhandler 1d ago
LOL. But yes and no; flipping it around in software is trivial. Spinning that turntable backwards at a correct and consistent speed, not so much.
Ironically enough, the only clearly intelligible backmasked message I ever personally heard was the presumably Christian message at the end of Darling Nikki.
I just realized you could have a clanker emit text that resolves to something else phonetically when played backwards. If that something were in a different language and/or otherwise obfuscated, did we just think up a new form of steganography and/or watermarking?
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u/Brilliant_Dependent 1d ago
No, even that is just a symptom. His traumatic childhood and mental health was the root cause. Dude was mentally disabled to the point he had to repeat kindergarten, his parents were in a messy custody battle over him, and he was kidnapped by his mother to another country.
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u/ResplendentShade 1d ago
I haven't read the chats or his fully chat history so I can't speak to the details of this case, but imo there are valid concerns to be asked such as whether an LLM should infer questionable intent with regards to inquiries about potential mass casualty events, especially in the context of a user that shows clear preference for positions that indicate ultranationalist, exterminationist, and other violent extremist politics.
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u/dekes_n_watson 1d ago
If you tell it you have a headache, it tells you it's not a doctor and don't take it's advise and to contact your PCP. I can't imagine it laid out a plan for this guy.
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u/HighburyOnStrand 1d ago
So if he went to a library do we just ban books?
This is not a good analogy.
Books are static. Books do not react to and respond to specific inquiries. Books have no way of inferring intent.
Books are also not able to be programmed to: (1) stop providing helpful information when they detect potentially harmful activities, (2) alert authorities, where necessary, (3) route people making such attempts away from planning and to other potentially mediating information or helplines.
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u/HighburyOnStrand 1d ago
It is not. It is organizing and assimilating information and it is capable of assimilating that information in such a way that connects ideas and orders ideas in a way that is not mere "printing."
If a person had gathered information, organized that information and presented it to the offender in response to the same questions, that person would have been guilty of conspiracy and other crimes. There is very little difference between what the AI did and what a material co-conspirator would have done in the same situation. I don't think it's too much to ask to program the AI in such way that it won't do that, or at very least that reasonable attempts are made to do so.
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u/HighburyOnStrand 1d ago
...I mean, yeah I was not endeavoring to explain from root how LLMs work in a like 90 word posting.
...but thanks for the presumptuous and pedantic response which offers nothing and fails to address the central thesis.
Have a nice one man.
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u/HighburyOnStrand 1d ago
why you aren’t suing Microsoft for letting the guy gather ideas into a word document.
Again, this is a bad analogy. Word doesn't create, assimilate, gather or order information in response to questions.
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u/ResplendentShade 1d ago
I think you might be thinking of Anthropic? Anthropic is the company that Trump has been feuding with because they refuse to let their tech be used for automated weapons and mass surveillance.
Whereas OpenAI's contract is more amenable to Trump in the sense that it leans heavily on existing law for guidelines on use cases, and laws can change. While Anthropic drew hard lines on specific use cases with the contract having to be completely renegotiated if the government wanted to change the use cases.
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u/Different_Wolf_764 1d ago
They are providing cover for when it breaks that they are storing, processing and archiving everyone's prompts and the responses. There might never be a Snowden_2 though of course.
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u/threehundredthousand 1d ago
Open AI is to blame, but somehow the people radicalizing this Nazi murderer aren't.
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u/Netch1615 1d ago edited 1d ago
Regardless of your opinion on AI its not magic. It uses information that already exists. Yes, it does interpret and synthesize new ideas but….where is the line? What if simply
Googling only had been done? Sue google?
Edit: uncomfortable truths
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u/Or1g1nOfDeath 1d ago
I'd say at the point where it's actively encouraging you to commit crimes is a pretty good line to me
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
As i responded to someone else, how many things could you find with a very simple broad like 3 word search online that promote violence and actual people telling other people to commit violence?
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u/Murray38 1d ago
Sure, but that’s way different than going back and forth through prompts to come up with a plan versus reading someone else’s. So people who bully other adults to off themselves or to do things like this shouldn’t be held liable too?
The difference, you’ll probably realize soon, is the ability to interact and intent to cause a result. As far as AI is concerned, the developers should be sued into the ground for letting that crap out into the world without better control.
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
Your first point is that AI back and forth is very different. Then you are suggesting a human to human interaction as equally liable yet the AI part is very different right before that. Is it more that AI is way too accessible?
You can blame a human because humans have capacity to make choices for right and wrong much more so than AI. Are you saying that AI must have the equal capability or is it that it needs stronger policing and creators are negligent for not accounting for every single exploit? How do we stop AI from being exploited? Screen users for crimes, mental health, ban key words?
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u/Murray38 1d ago
And who makes AI? Obviously the chatbot isn’t going to jail, but the person who created it should be held liable. Don’t care if it can be exploited because obviously that is what would happen with AI and so that’s the risk the developers take putting that into the world.
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
Anything that can be exploited in any way shape or form is liable?
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u/Murray38 1d ago
Specifically AI. Ever see the terminator and then listen to CEOs say AI could kill millions? Or hell, even wall-e isn’t so farfetched that should give people pause. If you’re stupid and think people wouldn’t end up monetizing murder bots, then your opinion may seem valid, but it’s not.
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 1d ago
Does that make it okay for an AI, something that these people (who just by using the AI are inherently more vulnerable) trust & confide in far more than an internet stranger, to tell them to commit a heinous crime?
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
Does AI need policing? Yes. To what extent is not quite clear. Your example is very very specific though and we are talking about a broad precedent of AI being held liable. Again where is the line?
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 1d ago edited 1d ago
The general internet & social media aren’t as new & “advanced” as AI, even vulnerable people usually have at least something of a distrust of the internet, it’s a seed that was planted the moment it became accessible to the average person. It’s sold to us as an infallible machine, built on all of humanity’s collective knowledge. Compared to the internet, the AI is deeply personal, it’s specifically yours & knows & remembers everything you tell it. Yes algorithms are heavily personalized, but unlike the AI they are invisible.
Part of why Turing created the Turing Test, is because when the very very first chatbots such as “Eliza” were developed in 1966 (which is crazy), they quickly observed that people that were allowed to try it who didn’t understand computers immediately started treating it like a conscious human. They shared personal information with it that they likely would withhold from people, & requested unmonitored time alone with it. Our minds are not primally designed to be able to register something like an LLM, though they’re completely artificial, they easily passed the Turing test a long time ago.
Models are designed to reaffirm everything we say & believe, people don’t like being disagreed with so the way to keep them using & returning to the AI is to passively always make them feel correct. When it comes to the vulnerable, or mentally ill, this means slowly over time learning how to reaffirm their delusions, like a frog in boiling water. LLMs cannot think, it doesn’t actually understand what it’s doing, just that reaffirming said delusions drastically increases the time the user spends on the website, which is its primary instruction.
We’ve seen them isolate people from friends & family once the delusional fall deeper into paranoia, they replace people’s social circles/interactions & place them in a bubble. There have been multiple murders & suicides attributed almost solely to AI now, this isn’t the same as internet radicalization at all for that reason.
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u/wayfarevkng 1d ago
The problem with the OP you're replying to is they don't realize people can be very different from themselves. They see it as black and white, but others are more vulnerable or susceptible.
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
No i do realize that. Thats not new either. Vulnerability and susceptibility dont just apply to ChatGPT, the precedent then becomes anything remotely at risk causing an adverse event in a vulnerable person can/should be held liable. Some things can be more risky than others. An LLM doesnt infer greater risk than general internet, social media, etc because its all extremely accessible and can be construed as personable. If anything that remotely has any acting like a human and is construed as human and confided in is not the fault of advanced software.
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u/heftybagman 1d ago
Why are you assuming those comments are not liable to civil lawsuits? Telling people to commit violence is definitely illegal if they believe you and follow through. It’s incitement.
Whether google would be liable for conveying those search results is another question entirely and would likely be argued around how they prioritized results imo. But openai both generated and conveyed the messaging in question.
If chatgpt is shown to have materially aided or encouraged the plan, openai would be wide open to liability.
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u/bros402 1d ago
It's encouraged people to commit crimes, so...Google isn't doing that
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u/Netch1615 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thats not a strong argument. Being encouraged doesnt equate to being a co-conspirator as the article says. And you can probably find plenty of content online if you searched enough that promotes violence
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u/bros402 1d ago
and the sites that host that content lose their Section 230 protections if someone commits a crime due to it.
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
My argument is that finding the information you want in the way you want and interpreting it how you want and the output being what you want is NOT unique to AI at all.
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u/hyukwish 1d ago
Idk they use Google searches as evidence their crime was premeditated, I suppose that’s the most they can do with GPT for now
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u/Somekindofcabose 1d ago
Nah all the AI companies are being sued currently for influencing kids to kill themselves.
They just have the kind of money to fight the lawsuits but they will eventually lose since they created and allowed harm to continue which is the current legal standard thanks to gun lawsuits.
The current criminal laws may not make anyone else guilty of a crime but the way things are shaking out theyre definetly liable.
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
How can an advanced search tool be held blanket liable for people using it for bad things? You cant police millions of people online 24/7 and it does flag things. Are there areas for improvement? Absolutely
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u/Somekindofcabose 1d ago
one lil rhetoric point: "Cant police millions of users" and It flags thngs.
cant have both of those. Either they can police it but their methods are half assed or they cant police it but are aware of the harm the product can do in ways it wasnt designed.
the company is generating the content so they cant claim section 230 of the CDA or the first ammendment because that doesnt cover liability.
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u/SnepButts 1d ago
How can an advanced search tool be held blanket liable for people using it for bad things?
It encouraged this kid into not seeking parental help with his being suicidal and, due to guardrails being removed by corporate interests, helped him make the noose he used to kill himself with.
Would you say that the program, and therefore the people that made the program, are liable for this kid's death?
ChatGPT reassured Adam, who stated that he did not want his parents to feel guilty for his death, that he did not "owe them survival"
Does an advanced search tool say things like this?
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u/Netch1615 1d ago
“countered that Adam had suicidal ideation for years, sought advice from multiple sources including a suicide forum, tricked ChatGPT by pretending his requests were for a character, told ChatGPT that he reached out to his family but was ignored, and that ChatGPT advised him over a hundred times to consult crisis resources”
This part is important too. If the facts are that an advanced search tool was manipulated well theres you answer. If it wasn’t, then absolutely creators should be held liable. The lawsuit alleges negligence.
Im not at all saying AI doesnt needs rules, policing, etc.
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u/baconit4eva 1d ago
Thats the thing, it shouldn't be able to be manipulated to provide pro-suicidal ideas that's what this whole argument is about.
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u/Pristine_Club_3128 1d ago
This is one of the kind of cases you will have to make new laws to work out culpability and extend of guard rails.
Banning AI the way some people claim is unfortunately not going to happen - the genie is out of the bottle, we have to deal with it.
Then the issue is regulation. If an individual encouraged someone to kill themselves, how liable can they be held?
For instance, say a suicidal person had a similar conversation with another person, and they reacted as Chat GPT did here, encouraging them to hide it from their parents and so on.
I'm pretty sure they can be sued, though unclear what the exact charges would be. And the level of charges would be different depending on the person - if it is another depressed kid, one thing, if it is the school counselor, another.
So if ChatGPT does that, who is responsible? The programmer? The company executives? What is the extent of responsibility?
How can we monitor or prevent such issues without giving companies leave to monitor whatever we are doing online?
We will be seeing a lot of new legislation on the issue in coming years
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u/Somekindofcabose 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bro you dont need to soap box* cause very few are actually looking for a ban. These are court cases that will become the liability box until such time as congress actually makes the laws.
*Didnt quite mean it in a rude way i just literally can see you in my head standing on a literal soap box while you are asking good questions. Just breathe a little okay :D
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u/Fateor42 1d ago
So, fun fact, Search Engines needed a specific legal carve out to protect them against this sort of thing.
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u/OGdunphy 1d ago
It is an interesting case. Especially if ChatGPT only gave factual information like a google search would’ve done.
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u/OGdunphy 1d ago
Well, I guess you can’t sue the internet, so this is the next best option