Oct 1, 2024Confirmed
ChatGPT reportedly used to plan Zürich-Oerlikon knife attack that seriously injured three five-year-old boys
AI loose in the worldOtherDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
Before an October 2024 knife attack in Zürich-Oerlikon, Switzerland, a 23-year-old student reportedly asked ChatGPT about consequences of killing random victims, where to find children, and anatomy. He later stabbed three five-year-old boys. Prosecutors charged him with attempted murder; the AI-planning claims come from the indictment.
What this means for youA person reportedly used a general-purpose chatbot while planning violence, which raises questions about what these tools should refuse to answer. The claims come from an indictment and have not been tested in court.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1691
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
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