{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/king-colleagues-demand-answers-from-openai-following-reports-of-safety-and-secrecy-concerns", "King, Colleagues Demand Answers From OpenAI Following Reports of Safety and Secrecy Concerns", "2024-07-25", "2024", "2024-07", "Independent", "Senate", "ME", "Angus S. King, Jr.", "K000383", "www.king.senate.gov", "angusking", "https://www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/table", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 Following reports from whistleblowers and former employees at OpenAI voicing safety and security concerns, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) joined four of his colleagues in calling on artificial intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI to honor its \u201cpublic promises and mission\u201d regarding essential safety standards. Since its founding in 2015, OpenAI has branded itself as a safety-conscious and responsible research organization.\n\nIn the letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the senators highlight recent reporting that OpenAI whistleblowers and former employees have sounded alarms about OpenAI\u2019s focus on \u2018shiny products\u2019 over safety and societal impacts, allowing AI systems to be deployed without adequate safety review and insufficient cybersecurity \u2014 as well as possible retribution against former employees who publicly air concerns. The senators also ask whether OpenAI\u2019s commitments on AI safety remain in effect and request that the company reform its non-disparagement agreement practices that could deter whistleblowers from coming forward.\n\n\u201cWe write to you regarding recent reports about OpenAI\u2019s safety and employment practices. OpenAI has announced a guiding commitment to the safe, secure, and responsible development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public interest. These reports raise questions about how OpenAI is addressing emerging safety concerns,\u201d the Senators wrote.\n\nThe Senators continued, \u201cGiven OpenAI\u2019s position as a leading AI company, it is important that the public can trust in the safety and security of its systems. This includes the integrity of the company\u2019s governance structure and safety testing, its employment practices, its fidelity to its public promises and mission, and its cybersecurity policies.\u201d\n\nAccording to reports, the company has failed to honor its public commitment to allocate 20-percent of computing resources to AI safety, reassigned long-term AI safety team members, and required departing employees to sign life-long non-disparagement agreements under threats of taking back previously earned compensation.\n\nOn the letter, Senator King was joined by U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Mark Warner (D-VA).\n\nSenator King has been a leading voice in fighting threats from emerging technology, having served as the Co-Chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission \u2014 which has had dozens of recommendations become law since its launch in 2019. As a member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, Senator King has been a strong supporter of increased watermarking regulations. In a September 2023 open Intelligence hearing, King asked Dr. Yann LeCun \u2014 a New York University Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at New York University \u2014 about what is technologically feasible in terms of implementing watermarks (a small icon or caption) for users to discern between real and artificially created content.\n\nThe FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act legislation includes a Senator King-led provision to evaluate technology, including applications, tools, and models, to detect and watermark generative artificial intelligence. Most recently, he joined the bipartisan Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024 (DEFIANCE Act) that would allow victims to sue perpetrators for up to $150,000 who create and share fake visual depictions to falsely appear to be authentic. During a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, where he raised the question of what Congress and the private sector can do to combat fake and misinformation online. Most recently, he introduced legislation to combat non-consensual deep fake explicit images online.\n\nThe full text of the letter can be found here and below.\n\n+++\n\nDear Mr. Altman,\n\nWe write to you regarding recent reports about OpenAI\u2019s safety and employment practices. OpenAI has announced a guiding commitment to the safe, secure, and responsible development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public interest. These reports raise questions about how OpenAI is addressing emerging safety concerns. We seek additional information from OpenAI about the steps that the company is taking to meet its public commitments on safety, how the company is internally evaluating its progress on those commitments, and on the company\u2019s identification and mitigation of cybersecurity threats.\n\nSafe and secure AI is widely viewed as vital to the nation\u2019s economic competitiveness and geopolitical standing in the twenty-first century. Moreover, OpenAI is now partnering with the U.S. government and national security and defense agencies to develop cybersecurity tools to protect our nation\u2019s critical infrastructure. National and economic security are among the most important responsibilities of the United States Government, and unsecure or otherwise vulnerable AI systems are not acceptable.\n\nGiven OpenAI\u2019s position as a leading AI company, it is important that the public can trust in the safety and security of its systems. This includes the integrity of the company\u2019s governance structure and safety testing, its employment practices, its fidelity to its public promises and mission, and its cybersecurity policies. The voluntary commitments that you and other leading AI companies made with the White House last year were an important step towards building this trust.\n\nWe therefore request the following information by August 13, 2024:\n\nDoes OpenAI plan to honor its previous public commitment to dedicate 20 percent of its computing resources to research on AI safety?\n\nIf so, describe the steps that OpenAI has, is, or will take to dedicate 20 percent of its computing resources to research on AI safety.\n\nIf not, what is the percentage of computing resources that OpenAI is dedicating to AI safety research?\n\nCan you confirm that your company will not enforce permanent non-disparagement agreements for current and former employees?\n\nCan you further commit to removing any other provisions from employment agreements that could be used to penalize employees who publicly raise concerns about company practices, such as the ability to prevent employees from selling their equity in private \u201ctender offer\u201d events?\n\nIf not, please explain why, and any internal protections in place to ensure that these provisions are not used to financially disincentivize whistleblowers.\n\nDoes OpenAI have procedures in place for employees to raise concerns about cybersecurity and safety? How are those concerns addressed once they are raised?\n\nHave OpenAI employees raised concerns about the company\u2019s cybersecurity practices?\n\nWhat security and cybersecurity protocols does OpenAI have in place, or plan to put in place, to prevent malicious actors or foreign adversaries from stealing an AI model, research, or intellectual property from OpenAI?\n\nThe OpenAI Supplier Code of Conduct requires your suppliers to implement strict non-retaliation policies and provide whistleblowers channels for reporting concerns without fear of reprisal. Does OpenAI itself follow these practices?\n\nIf yes, describe OpenAI\u2019s non-retaliation policies and whistleblower reporting channels, and to whom those channels report.\n\nDoes OpenAI allow independent experts to test and assess the safety and security of OpenAI\u2019s systems pre-release?\n\nDoes the company currently plan to involve independent experts on safe and responsible AI development in its safety and security testing and evaluation processes, procedures, and techniques, and in its governance structure, such as in its safety and security committee?\n\nWill OpenAI commit to making its next foundation model available to U.S. Government agencies for pre-deployment testing, review, analysis, and assessment?\n\nWhat are OpenAI\u2019s post-release monitoring practices? What patterns of misuse and safety risks have your teams observed after the deployment of your most recently released large language models? What scale must such risks reach for your monitoring practices to be highly likely to catch them? Please share your learnings from post-deployment measurements and the steps taken to incorporate them into improving your policies, systems, and model updates.\n\nDo you plan to make retrospective impact assessments of your already-deployed models available to the public?\n\nPlease provide documentation on how OpenAI plans to meet its voluntary safety and security commitments to the Biden-Harris administration.\n\nThank you very much for your attention to these matters.\n\nSincerely,\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:24:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/king-colleagues-demand-answers-from-openai-following-reports-of-safety-and-secrecy-concerns"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8480299729853868, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}