According to a report from Bloomberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with US lawmakers on Wednesday (July 29) and later told reporters that he supports federal artificial intelligence legislation.
Altman did not discuss specific bills, but said he “certainly” supports AI cybersecurity guardrail legislation, according to the report.
During the meeting, Altman also discussed OpenAI’s next AI model with lawmakers, according to the report.
“We talked about new models and what it takes to keep America excited about AI,” Altman told reporters, according to the report.
Politico reported Wednesday that Altman declined to tell reporters what new features OpenAI’s next model might include.
When asked when the company would or would launch this model, Altman responded, “I don’t know. That’s part of what we want to talk about here,” according to the report.
According to the report, Altman did not commit to supporting mandatory review of the Frontier model, but said it is important that the federal government be able to test the Frontier model with new levels of functionality.
CNBC reported Wednesday that Altman said he planned to meet with the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, this week while in Washington, D.C. Altman will reportedly meet with various Trump administration officials, members of Congress and economists this week.
Federal agencies have an August 1 deadline to develop a framework for conducting functional assessments of AI models voluntarily provided by AI companies. Those assessments and deadlines were included in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in June, the report said.
PYMNTS reports that a June 2 executive order requires access to new AI models up to 30 days before release and allows governments to select “trusted partners with early access to targeted frontier models to foster safe innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.”
OpenAI announced on July 21 that the security incident that Hugging Face reported a week ago was caused by an OpenAI model during OpenAI’s testing of its cyber capabilities. The company described this as an “unprecedented cyber incident.”
