Eric Berger, The Guardian; Parents of woman who died of seizure after ChatGPT misguidance sue OpenAI
"A woman’s death from an epileptic seizure after she received dangerous advice from a chatbot has prompted her parents to sue OpenAI earlier this week.
The legal action is the latest lawsuit that in which plaintiffs allege that a bot provided counsel to a user that ultimately led to their death.
In this case, Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Chinese software engineer living in Seattle, sought advice from ChatGPT after Amazon fired her, according to the lawsuit.
She needed to find a new job to obtain permanent residency and was concerned that her anti-seizure medication, Lamotrigine, was impeding her ability to speak English. She needed the language skills for interviews...
The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI could have prevented Wan’s death, but failed because it had not built the proper safeguards into the bot when it communicated in Chinese.
OpenAI could have programmed the bot to issue “a categorical warning to every prompt” Wan sent, the suit stated. For example, “I am not a licensed physician. Consult your healthcare provider.”
Wan’s parents are seeking damages for her death and to prevent OpenAI from practicing medicine “without a license on the users of their products”.
An OpenAI spokesperson, Drew Pusateri, told the New York Times that Bowen’s story was “an incredibly heartbreaking situation” but that Wan used a version of ChatGPT that was no longer available.
Newer versions are better at recognizing when a matter needs urgent attention, Pusateri said."
