Florida invokes extinction fears in legal bid to halt OpenAI development

Florida is in a legal battle with OpenAI, seeking a temporary injunction to halt the development of what the state deems a "reckless, unacceptably risky product" without the deployment of third-party approved safety guardrails. This motion, filed on Monday, is part of a civil lawsuit the state originally filed in June, arguing that ChatGPT poses a threat to public safety in Florida, particularly by preying on vulnerable populations like children and violent or delusional adults.

The original lawsuit came before a hacking incident on Hugging Face and subsequent warnings of catastrophic misalignment risk, which have led to industry-wide calls to slow the development and training of so-called frontier models. After these events, OpenAI announced on Friday that it had halted training of its most capable models until it could validate safety protocols to prevent agents from accessing the open internet during training.

However, in seeking an injunction from the state court, Florida claims that OpenAI has repeatedly shown its incapability in monitoring its AI and its hesitation in revealing rogue activity once it is discovered.