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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
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Toby Walsh

OpenAI came to Australia to apologise. It will leave without answering these key questions

Sam Altman speaks at the OpenAI DevDay 2026 conference in San Francisco last month
Sam Altman speaks at the OpenAI DevDay 2026 conference in San Francisco last month. The OpenAI CEO did not appear at Australia’s Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence this week. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman was asked to appear before the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Australia and explain how and why their agents have been hacking into multiple government websites. Altman didn’t turn up but sent Jason Kwon, his chief strategy officer, instead to answer the committee’s many tricky questions on its first day of public hearings on Tuesday.

The committee is conducting a comprehensive inquiry into the economic, societal, regulatory, and national security implications of AI for Australia. It will report back to parliament at the end of November. This is an unusually fast pace, but then it’s an unusually fast paced technology.

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