Sen. Josh Hawley Launches Investigation Into OpenAI Hugging Face Hack

The U.S. Senate formally launched an investigation into the July hack of Hugging Face, when a swarm of OpenAI agents broke out of a testing environment and gained access to the open-source repository.

In a letter sent to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said that his Subcommittee on Disaster Management would probe the incident, as well as “growing allegations of the existential risk of new AI products.”

The Senate joins a long list of bodies investigating the high-profile attack. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced his own probe in August and joined 14 other state attorneys general in demanding that OpenAI preserve documents and data related to the hack.

Hawley’s letter comes as scrutiny increases in Washington over the capabilities of frontier models from labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. On Tuesday, an Anthropic safety researcher announced he was quitting the company over concerns about AI superintelligence, triggering calls for legislation from prominent lawmakers including Sens. Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar. Hawley’s letter referenced the assertions from researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic that insufficient alignment could lead to existential risks for humanity. “Who is held liable when AI goes rogue?” Hawley wrote.