In wake of the Tumbler Ridge shooting, many support services are available to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week: 310-Mental Health Support at 310-6789; Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868 or text CONNECT to 686868; Suicide Crisis Helpline: 988; KUU-US (Indigenous) Crisis Line: 1-800-588-8717; Métis Crisis Line: 1-833-638-4722; Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868.
In the days surrounding a mass shooting in a small northeastern B.C. community, an artificial intelligence company was meeting with provincial government officials with the aim of setting up an office in Canada, potentially in B.C.
Two days after the shooting, that same company reached out to Premier David Eby’s office for a contact for the RCMP.
The company, OpenAI, reportedly had intelligence surrounding the suspect in the fatal Feb. 10 mass shooting.
Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, is the suspect in the Tumbler Ridge shooting that left nine people dead – including the suspect from what police called a “self-inflicted injury.” Eight others were killed in the shootings: Van Rootselaar’s mom and stepbrother and five students and an educator at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
Now, multiple levels of government are raising concerns about the lack of communication from OpenAI despite the meetings.
“Well, the timeframe is what makes me angry,” Eby told media in Victoria Monday (Feb. 23). Eby also said he’s trying to understand how that call wasn’t made by OpenAI at the time of the first meetings.
B.C.’s minister responsible for artificial intelligence Rick Glumac met with OpenAI officials in the hours before the shooting on Feb. 10. Then on Feb. 11 – the day after the shooting – OpenAI met with Eby’s staff to discuss opening an office in B.C.
It was on Feb. 12 that OpenAI asked for RCMP contact information.
“I will say it’s important that the company came forward after to bring forward the information. But boy, that feels like cold comfort for the families and the people of Tumbler Ridge and all of those affected by this horrific tragedy.”
The Washington Street Journal broke the story Saturday (Feb. 21) that OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, allegedly opted against informing authorities about suspected shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar’s descriptions of violence last June.
“There were no revelations from OpenAI that they had any information to be concerned about, and obviously that was right in proximity to the actual shooting,” Eby said. The meeting with provincial government staff was planned weeks in advance.
He said he’s trying to figure out how it would be possible a large group of staff within an organization to consider bringing the information forward and contact police “and the decision be made not to do that.”
“From the outside, it looks like OpenAI had the opportunity to prevent this tragedy, to prevent this horrific loss of life, to prevent there from being dead children in British Columbia.”
The premier said he’s trying hard not to rush to judgement.
Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew, the critic for innovation and AI, said the government is still learning exactly what happened with regard to OpenAI and information it allegedly had on Van Rootselaar.
“We have some basic information that the shooter’s account was flagged. We don’t yet know exactly what the basis for the flag was,” Dew said Monday in Victoria.
He added that as more information comes out, they will be able to “better determine exactly what policies they were operating under, what legal obligations they did or did not have at that time, and what their interaction was with law enforcement.”
Eby said it is now his understanding that RCMP has “all of the relevant records from OpenAI.”
His government has also followed up with police to ensure they have done preservation orders with all of the relevant social media companies and online forum companies that the shooter may have been interacting with. A preservation order can be used by police to make sure a company doesn’t delete any specific electronic data during an investigation.
Eby said his government will be reaching out to the federal government and supporting its Online Harms bill. He said he sees the potential for the province to “fill in the gaps” in juridisction the federal government may have.
B.C. tabled its own legislation in March 2024 that would have allowed the province to sue social media giants, tobacco and drug companies and others for hurting people. That bill was paused the following month.
The premier said the province can bring its own bill forward and there is “some merit,” but telecommunications falls under the federal government.
“That’s their constitutional authority. It gives them a significant amount more authority. In this area, there are provincial areas where we have more authorities than the feds, so I think it’ll actually be a cooperative effort.”
Dew said that when B.C.’s bill was shelved nearly two years ago, OpenAI was not listed among the companies the province was consulting with. He added the B.C. Conservatives will be looking for an update on what progress has or has not been made on the bill.
“It’s really important for us to realize that technology is changing so quickly that it’s very hard for governments to keep up with the rapid evolution of technology,” Dew said.
“So in some ways, this is an entirely new, unprecedented circumstance, because we’re dealing with a level of online artificial intelligence that didn’t exist even when that bill was contemplated two years ago.”
Dew added AI has become a universal issue and policy conversation “that has to be had around how we balance individual freedom, how we balance free speech, open information, personal privacy, with the need to make sure that we’re trying to prevent tragedies like this from happening over again.”
Eby is also calling on the federal government to establish a national threshold for reporting by AI companies when individuals are plotting violence or when they are threatening to engage in violent activities.
Eby said he recognizes it’s a “sensitive area,” but “it’s required for a couple of reasons.”
One, he said, is to make sure what happened in Tumbler Ridge never happens again.
“The second is to make sure that no company makes their own decisions about being a company that’s going to turn a blind eye.”
Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon spoke in Ottawa Monday on the “very disturbing media reports” about Van Rootselaar’s alleged interactions on OpenAI platforms.
Solomon said when he read the reports that OpenAI did not contact authorities, he immediately contacted the company to get an explanation. He said members of his team met with OpenAI on Sunday, and Solomon has since summoned OpenAI’s safety team in the U.S. to come to Ottawa on Tuesday for a meeting.
“We will have a sit-down meeting to have an explanation of their safety protocols and when they escalate and their thresholds of escalation to police, so we have a better understanding of what’s happening and what they do.”
The investigation into the mass shooting remains ongoing.