Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says OpenAI’s CEO agreed to let Canadian experts into its safety office to help evaluate future threats following the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.
Solomon met virtually for a half hour with the tech company’s CEO, Sam Altman, on Wednesday afternoon.
“He expressed to me horror and responsibility in general for not flagging. This is why they’re making changes,” Solomon said in an interview shortly after the meeting with CBC’s Power & Politics.
Solomon was referring to a ChatGPT account belonging to the shooter that had been banned and flagged internally months before the shooting, but not sent to police.
Solomon said Altman plans to meet with B.C. Premier David Eby on Thursday. Eby has demanded an apology from the CEO.
OpenAI agrees to reassess old threats, flag new ones directly to RCMP: minister
“Sam Altman said he will tell the premier what he’s going to tell him,” Solomon said when asked about a potential apology.
OpenAI has not responded to multiple requests for comment from CBC News on this latest meeting with Solomon. Altman has yet to make any public comments about his company’s connection to the shooting in the small northern B.C. community last month.
Solomon said Altman also agreed to include Canadian experts in mental health and law within OpenAI’s safety office — where the company assesses threats and whether or not to inform police.
He also requested OpenAI allow experts from the Canadian AI Safety Institute, a federal body within his department, be allowed to do a full, detailed assessment of the company’s new safety protocols.
The federal government has been under pressure from opposition members and experts to do more to regulate artificial intelligence companies in the wake of the shooting. Eby has called on Ottawa to set minimum thresholds for when platforms must report threats of violence to law enforcement.
So far Solomon has said “all options are on the table” for regulation but no specific measures have been announced.
This latest meeting comes after Solomon called several other senior officials with the tech company to Ottawa last Tuesday. Solomon said he left that meeting “disappointed,” and despite promises afterward from OpenAI to improve safety measures, Solomon said last Friday the California-based tech company hadn’t provided enough clarity on the changes or a plan for how it will implement them.
OpenAI also made public last week that after the shooter’s name, Jesse Van Rootselaar, was made public, it discovered she had a second ChatGPT account.
OpenAI didn’t flag the banned account to police until after the killings, saying the shooter’s activities at the time didn’t meet the company’s threshold to inform law enforcement because it didn’t identify credible or imminent planning.
Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at the family home before going to the local secondary school, where she killed five students, an educational assistant and then herself.
Solomon said last week he’ll seek out meetings with other “platforms” to ensure they have safety measures in place, but his office has yet to say what companies he’s referring to or whether those conversations have happened.
