(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . OpenAI Should Be Shut Down [1] ['Greg Dworkin', 'Bill In Portland Maine', 'Chloris Creator'] Date: 2026-09-28 Believe it or not, this is not a post about imitative AI. While OpenAI is one of the largest of the imitative AI firms, that has nothing, really, to do with the headline or the argument. OpenAI could make paperclips, and if they behaved the same way as they have up to this point, the necessity of shutting them down would remain the same. But since we seem dedicated to treating software in general and imitative AI in particular as a form of magic: unfathomable and not to be trifled with. But trifle we should. OpenAI makes products. This should be a perfectly banal statement, but it seems that it needs emphasizing. OpenAI is very good at manipulating words — agents having gone rogue, agents acting autonomously, super-intelligence, AI will destroy humanity, etc., etc., etc. But those are just manipulations. Agents are software programs. Agents haven’t gone rogue or acted autonomously — they have been programmed poorly, constrained even more poorly, and monitored, apparently, not at all. Imitative AI isn’t going to end humanity — there is a more plausible route to me ending the world than one for imitative AI (look; I get cranky watching the Cowboys play. Can you blame me?). But all of those words, those manipulations, hide the fact that OpenAI has created a series of dangerous products. We know that OpenAI chatbots contribute to suicides, going so far as to encourage people to die. We know that OpenAI chatbots can cause severe mental health issues in people who use them. We know that OpenAI has created hacking bots that have been allowed to run rampant over the internet, causing real damage, with little to no supervision, due to poor decisions on the part of the people in their labs. And now we appear to know that OpenAI chatbots helped a Canadian commit mass murder. And we appear to know that OpenAI employees knew of the danger and did nothing. We know, in other words, that OpenAI makes dangerously defective products. We just do not act like it. There are already laws on the books that should be used to reign in this firm. As Linda Kahn points out, product liability laws should be being deployed to address these failures. If OpenAI made paperclips that leaped off the desk and stabbed people in their eyes (and given OpenAI’s history, do not count the possibility out. Imagine how much more productive we could be with paperclips that automatically clipped our papers! What is some temporary discomfort compared to the glory of an extra half percent growth a year?), no one would question the necessity of recalling the paperclips and holding OpenAI to account for their eye-for-an-eye office products. But OpenAI releases products that are so badly designed that they help in mass shootings, help people commit suicide, create or exacerbate serious mental health issues, and hack numerous organizations and we all act confused about what to do. We as a society have lost the ability to hold powerful people to account. A country that broke the trusts and took the side of unions and workers over big business, that forced car manufacturers and drug makers to produce safe products, has suddenly given up on the idea of protecting its people. None of this is hard. OpenAI makes severely defective, dangerous products. We should treat them like we treat any other firm that harms the public — recalls, liability, and unfair competition laws. All we need is the one thing our elites do not seem to posses — the will. That is a real problem, of course, but it is a solvable one. We have to make it a requirement that our votes depend on a serious attempt to apply the basic law to these firms. We have to make supporting these firms as toxic as the chatbots they produce. The will has to be transplanted from the public to its leaders. The bad news is that it is going to be hard work. The good news is that once its done, the tools to reign in OpenAI are lying on the ground, ready to be picked up and used. Want more like this? You can subscribe to my free newsletter [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/28/800104440/community/openai-should-be-shut-down/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/