Sam Altman apologizes to Canadian town where OpenAI failed to alert police about a mass shooter

Open AI CEO Sam Altman wrote a letter publicly apologizing to residents of the Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge after the company failed to alert local authorities about a person who allegedly killed eight people in the town earlier this year. On Feb. 10, an 18-year-old suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar, allegedly killed her mother and stepbrother before killing five students and an educational assistant at a school in Tumbler Ridge, a rural town in the western Canadian province of British Columbia. Van Rootselaar, who was transitioning from male to female, later killed herself at the school, according to authorities. In a letter published last week in local newspaper Tumbler RidgeLines, and whose authenticity was confirmed by an OpenAI spokesperson, Altman addressed the town’s residents, saying he was “deeply sorry” the company did not alert authorities to the suspected shooter. “While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered,” Altman wrote. A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to comment beyond what was in Altman’s letter. Months before the shooting, OpenAI employees had flagged the ChatGPT account of the suspected shooter, Van Rootselaar, last June for interactions that described gun violence, The Wall Street Journal reported. A group of a dozen staffers reportedly debated internally on whether to alert authorities, but ultimately decided not to. The company banned her ChatGPT account, because her activity didn’t meet the criteria for an imminent threat, the Journal reported. OpenAI later contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to support the investigation, but local leaders have claimed more could have been done to prevent the shooting.David Eby, the premier of the province of British Columbia, wrote in a post on X Friday “the apology is necessary, and yet grossly insufficient for the devastation done to the families of Tumbler Ridge.” In an interview with the Canadian