Tumbler Ridge shooter's ChatGPT use "more disturbing" than known: reporter

Tumbler Ridge shooter's ChatGPT use "more disturbing" than known: reporter(cbc.ca)

30 points by devonnull 11 days ago | 27 comments

smallnix 11 days ago |

> seeing a gun can increase aggression-called the "weapons effect

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28918699/

I did not know that this topic has been subject to research.

TZubiri 11 days ago |

>"I think if we do the right changes to the Criminal Code, it will change the behaviour of AI companies, because there will be a clear line to accountability,"

Isn't it a judicial issue? How is a chatbot owned and operated by a company materially different than the responsibility of an accident involving an unmanned vehicle or machine owned and operated by a company?

harwoodr 11 days ago | |

Perhaps because the chatbot is advising the user on how to act in a given situation... and how to circumvent having their chatGPT prompts flagged by the system.

TZubiri 10 days ago | | |

Is that worse than a company product actively causing the death of its operator? Or perhaps its not as direct, so it escapes prosecution?

doodlebugging 11 days ago |

There is more to the story. They have arrested an American from Bellingham, WA for providing material assistance to the Tumbler Ridge, BC shooter. [0]

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/livestory/tu...

It's funny that this OP's post was on the front page minutes ago but is rapidly being buried. I had to use the search function to comment on this thread. It has dropped completely off of the list of over 650 posts.

OpenAI and ChatGPT evidently have a ridiculous number of supporters willing to bury anything this uncomplimentary and disturbing.

Maybe they feel responsible.

Hopefully they are held responsible. This incident is the catalyst for changing laws in Canada that may lead to individuals and corporations being held personally responsible when bad things happen. [1]

Wouldn't it be great to see the day when the C-levels who decide to deploy hardware/software/other solutions that obviously will cause deaths and destruction can be held liable in a real court and suffer severe sanctions as a result? I'm okay with the death penalty in these cases, for the corporation and the management that allowed or encouraged the destructive outcome in order to protect profits or solidify market advantages.

[1]https://fraservalleytoday.ca/2026/09/25/cp-newsalert-b-c-ag-...

mistralFan 11 days ago |

The shooter notably also created a "Shooting Simulator" on Roblox: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/13/canada-school-....

fragmede 11 days ago | |

Yeah but that's not a crime. Having fantasies that you recreate digitally is one thing. Sharing them with other people is another. It's another thing entirely to actually do them though. At the end of the day, we're trending in a dangerous direction of thought crime, where thinking things is a crime. Which it's not. I've already committed multiple felonies in my imagination before breakfast, merely by thinking them, but because they're a figment of imagination and no one got hurt, there's nothing wrong with that.

hackeraccount 10 days ago | | |

Or at least nothing criminal with that. :-)

That's my larger problem personally. The idea that everything that is wrong should be a crime and everything that is not a crime is not wrong. I'm pretty sure none of those things is true but sometimes it seems like everyone believes they both are.

samename 11 days ago |

> "In a hallway, indoors, or a crowded classroom, the 870 [Remington shotgun] is brutal," it quotes ChatGPT as saying. "Close quarters is its playground."

You have to be kidding me

IshKebab 11 days ago | |

You know how AI works right? This shouldn't really be surprising to anyone here.

agos 11 days ago | | |

And yet at the mere suggestion of cyber security they cut you off

1p09gj20g8h 11 days ago |

anddddd deranked in 5 4 3 2...

doodlebugging 11 days ago | |

What is "deranking"? Is that where mods pull a post from the list before it gets too popular because the subject matter of the post makes the parent company uncomfortable by highlighting truths when it is better for the parent company if they leave those truths greyed out?

OP's post dropped from the front page after about a dozen comments until it was completely absent from a list of over 650 posts.

Uncomfortable truths - like Sam Altman's relationship with YCombinator; his "leadership" of OpenAI and ChatGPT; credible accounts of his long-term rape of his sister, etc.

At some point ordinary people will get really tired of seeing stuff like this and they will band together, regardless of political affiliations, etc, and will restore sane regulatory infrastructure with serious penalties and full accountability to the live people who decide that hiding behind a corporate veil will protect them and their families from legal consequences. The whole concept of "move fast and break things" will finally have a pendulum effect when the bob topples their empires on the other side of the swing cycle.