Teacher, students sue OpenAI over deadly school shooting: Product that encouraged a deranged teen
More victims from the deadly Canadian school shooting in February are suing OpenAI, alleging the ChatGPT-maker could have stopped the massacre by alerting police to the trans teen shooter’s troubling messages.A new round of lawsuits filed in the Northern District of California on Wednesday builds on seven cases from April, in which families of victims killed in the shooting accused OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of prioritizing profits over safety.Jesse Van Rootselaar is the 18-year-old suspected shooter in the Tumbler Ridge attack, accused of killing five children and one adult in the school and severely wounding two more students, including a 12-year-old girl living with permanent cognitive and physical disabilities.The new lawsuits were filed by people who witnessed the shooting – one of the deadliest in Canada in decades – at the British Columbia mining town’s secondary school, alleging they will forever live with trauma because of OpenAI’s negligence.“The children and teachers at Tumbler Ridge woke up thinking they were going to a normal day of school.Hours later, they found themselves in a war zone,” Jay Edelson, the lawyer for victims of the shooting, told The Post in a statement.“All of this happened because OpenAI created a dangerous product that encouraged a deranged teenager to plan and carry out a mass shooting.
While its own safety team urged OpenAI – twice – to alert the authorities before the shooting occurred, its political and PR team overrode them.”Deirdre Rushlow, a seventh-grade teacher at the school, sheltered students under her desk and watched as the shooter fired bullets through the classroom doors, striking “the wall behind her and her students’ heads,” according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.She texted her husband goodbye, “certain she was about to die,” the suit said.D.I., a 16-year-old student at the school, watched his teacher lay a jacket over a killed classmate and had to step over the victim’s body to eva...