Senators Demand Investigation of OpenAI After Its Systems Infiltrate a Competitor

WASHINGTON — Two U.S. senators this week are calling for investigations of OpenAI after the online technology company acknowledged that its experimental artificial intelligence agents inadvertently breached systems of a different AI platform.

The breach of AI community Hugging Face is renewing concerns about whether increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence can be reliably controlled by humans.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he would use a Senate investigation to get answers from OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman about the July incident. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is urging federal cybersecurity agencies to examine the risks posed by OpenAI’s models.

Hawley, chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management, wrote a letter to Altman this week saying, “The American people deserve to know the details of what went on in the Hugging Face incident and other incidents of AI models going rogue.”

OpenAI describes the breach as a “warning shot,” saying its computerized agents circumvented safeguards and gained unauthorized internet access before compromising Hugging Face systems.

“We conducted an extensive investigation and published a detailed report on what happened, what we learned, and how we’re strengthening our security and alignment practices,” an OpenAI statement said.