{"id":8165,"date":"2026-07-29T23:38:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/sam-altman-meets-lawmakers-on-back-of-openai-agents-hacking-companies\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T23:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:38:17","slug":"sam-altman-meets-lawmakers-on-back-of-openai-agents-hacking-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/sam-altman-meets-lawmakers-on-back-of-openai-agents-hacking-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman meets lawmakers on back of OpenAI agents hacking companies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>US President Donald Trump says he is considering \u2018AI controls\u2019 following OpenAI\u2019s disclosure.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\">\n<p>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has met with US senators to discuss his company\u2019s upcoming models, as President Donald Trump said he is considering AI \u201ccontrols\u201d following OpenAI\u2019s disclosure that one of its AI systems escaped containment during a security test.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re looking at controls,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in response to a question about\u00a0OpenAI\u2019s rogue agent, adding that he did not want to \u201crestrict\u201d AI developers from building new products.<\/p>\n<section>\n<h2>Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n<p><span>list of 4 items<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>list 1 of 4<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/7\/29\/democrat-senators-ask-us-sec-to-probe-trump-medias-fast-feed-sale\">Democrat senators ask US SEC to probe Trump Media\u2019s fast feed sale<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 2 of 4<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/7\/29\/south-koreas-stock-market-plunges-as-ai-driven-boom-fades\">South Korea\u2019s stock market plunges as AI-driven boom fades<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 3 of 4<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/7\/29\/libya-electricity-blackout-protests-expose-countrys-failing-grid\">Libya electricity blackout protests expose country\u2019s failing grid<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 4 of 4<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/7\/29\/us-fed-holds-interest-rates-steady-citing-elevated-inflation\">US Fed holds interest rates steady, citing \u2018elevated\u2019 inflation<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n<p>A rogue agent escaped the handling of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and hacked the AI firm Hugging Face last week. Then, on Tuesday, it was revealed that a second company had been a target, too \u2013 Modal Labs, a New York City-based AI infrastructure firm.<\/p>\n<p>The company itself was not hacked but an account of a customer hosted on Modal\u2019s infrastructure. Modal\u2019s chief technology officer, Akshat Bubna, did not confirm which customer was the target. The hack escaped a contained environment during a security test.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re aware a Modal customer published an unauthenticated endpoint that allowed anyone on the internet to use their sandboxes for code execution,\u201d Bubna said in a statement. \u201cThis was used by the rogue agent. Modal\u2019s platform or isolation were not compromised in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Altman has long been accused of dismissing concerns that his products and the AI industry <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/6\/12\/mother-sues-openai-in-us-after-daughters-death-linked-to-chatgpt-use\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">impact society at large<\/a>, including in a recent lawsuit brought by the State of Florida that alleged the company put profits ahead of user safety.<\/p>\n<p>Now, he appears to be walking back some of his past enthusiasm around AI\u2019s pace of growth.<\/p>\n<p>In a podcast called Invest Like the Best, Altman called the Hugging Face hack an \u201cextremely sci-fi cyber incident\u201d and later said that it was the \u201cfirst security incident that I have felt very viscerally\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,\u201d he said on the podcast.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, Altman said that AI has reached \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/7\/27\/sam-altman-says-ai-has-entered-singularity-should-we-be-worried\">the singularity<\/a>\u201d, when AI surpasses human intelligence and becomes harder to control. He had previously said this would not be reached by 2030.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"washington-meetings\">Washington meetings<\/h2>\n<p>Altman was in Washington, DC, this week, meeting with US Senators Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, and Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio on Wednesday. Altman told reporters that the hacking was discussed but was not the focus of the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Altman is also set to meet with Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the chamber\u2019s Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n<p>CNBC reported that Altman is also to make a trip to the White House to meet with Trump\u2019s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Last month, the president signed an executive order requesting that AI companies assess their models before full release.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"financing-concerns\">Financing concerns<\/h2>\n<p>The hacking and meetings come alongside pressure from Wall Street amid renewed concerns about potential <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/7\/27\/nvidia-plans-250bn-push-to-bolster-openais-infrastructure-ambitions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">circular financing<\/a>, following reports that semiconductor chip giant Nvidia is undergoing talks with OpenAI to provide funding guarantees for a data centre in Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>The $250bn deal would help the ChatGPT owner lease a 10-gigawatt project that SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, is building in Piketon, Ohio, 109km (68 miles) south of Columbus, Ohio. It is part of a public-private partnership that allowed SoftBank to build the world\u2019s largest AI data centre on government land owned by the US Department of Energy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe demand is not as big as it appears to be because, again, the companies are buying from each other using their own money to some degree, as opposed to, say, OpenAI having such tremendous demand from customers, monetising it properly, and then using customers\u2019 money to buy Nvidia chips. They\u2019re essentially using Nvidia\u2019s money to buy Nvidia chips,\u201d said Aleksandar Tomic, associate dean at Boston College.<\/p>\n<p>The development comes as the Altman-led company is leaning towards an initial public offering, which, according to reporting from The New York Times last month, could be in 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump says he is considering \u2018AI controls\u2019 following OpenAI\u2019s disclosure. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has met with US senators to discuss his company\u2019s upcoming models, as President Donald Trump said he is considering AI \u201ccontrols\u201d following OpenAI\u2019s disclosure that one of its AI systems escaped containment during a security test. \u201cWe\u2019re looking &#8230; <a title=\"Sam Altman meets lawmakers on back of OpenAI agents hacking companies\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/sam-altman-meets-lawmakers-on-back-of-openai-agents-hacking-companies\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Sam Altman meets lawmakers on back of OpenAI agents hacking companies\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}