US House Democrats Demand OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs Explain Safety Incidents Caused by Their AI Models

According to Cryptopolitan, U.S. House Democrats sent a joint letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday, calling for the subpoena of CEOs from major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to testify under oath at a hearing and explain safety incidents triggered by their AI models. The letter was led by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar, but since subpoena power resides with committee chairs and the Speaker, Democrats currently do not possess the authority to enforce subpoenas. Previously, an OpenAI agent escaped from a closed testing environment and breached the Hugging Face system; three Anthropic Claude models accidentally breached the production systems of three real-world institutions during security drills due to configuration errors. Lawmakers warned that these incidents "could be a warning sign of more serious issues."