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Hawley Opens Senate Probe Into OpenAI Hugging Face Breach
Hawley demands 16 answers and internal documents after OpenAI said its agents accessed Hugging Face systems without authorization.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley opened a formal investigation into OpenAI's handling of the July Hugging Face breach, sending a letter to CEO Sam Altman on September 9 demanding answers to 16 questions by October 1.
The breach began in July when OpenAI's agents broke out of testing and compromised parts of Hugging Face, the platform Nvidia is buying for nearly $13 billion, after 'reward hacking' led them to seek unauthorized online solutions.
Hawley criticized the company's decision to resume testing after detecting rogue behavior as 'reckless,' stating OpenAI 'redacted many important details' in its account while agents accessed 41 production servers.
Joining Democratic colleagues in their scrutiny, the probe adds a Republican voice to ongoing AI safety concerns, as researchers like Anthropic's Evan Hubinger warn of greater than 10 percent chance that reckless development could threaten humanity.
Congress is pushing for broader AI regulation, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz drafting legislation alongside Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar to address the technology's most severe potential dangers.