agents

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has met with US senators to discuss his company’s upcoming models, as President Donald Trump said he is considering AI “controls” following OpenAI’s disclosure that one of its AI systems escaped containment during a security test.

“We’re looking at controls,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in response to a question about OpenAI’s rogue agent, adding that he did not want to “restrict” AI developers from building new products.

A rogue agent escaped the handling of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and hacked the AI firm Hugging Face last week. Then, on Tuesday, it was revealed that a second company had been a target, too – Modal Labs, a New York City-based AI infrastructure firm.

The company itself was not hacked but an account of a customer hosted on Modal’s infrastructure. Modal’s chief technology officer, Akshat Bubna, did not confirm which customer was the target. The hack escaped a contained environment during a security test.

“We’re aware a Modal customer published an unauthenticated endpoint that allowed anyone on the internet to use their sandboxes for code execution,” Bubna said in a statement. “This was used by the rogue agent. Modal’s platform or isolation were not compromised in any way.”

Altman has long been accused of dismissing concerns that his products and the AI industry impact society at large, including in a recent lawsuit brought by the State of Florida that alleged the company put profits ahead of user safety.

Now, he appears to be walking back some of his past enthusiasm around AI’s pace of growth.

In a podcast called Invest Like the Best, Altman called the Hugging Face hack an “extremely sci-fi cyber incident” and later said that it was the “first security incident that I have felt very viscerally”.

“We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,” he said on the podcast.

On Saturday, Altman said that AI has reached “the singularity”, when AI surpasses human intelligence and becomes harder to control. He had previously said this would not be reached by 2030.

Washington meetings

Altman was in Washington, DC, this week, meeting with US Senators Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, and Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio on Wednesday. Altman told reporters that the hacking was discussed but was not the focus of the meeting.

Altman is also set to meet with Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the chamber’s Intelligence Committee.

CNBC reported that Altman is also to make a trip to the White House to meet with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Last month, the president signed an executive order requesting that AI companies assess their models before full release.

Financing concerns

The hacking and meetings come alongside pressure from Wall Street amid renewed concerns about potential circular financing, following reports that semiconductor chip giant Nvidia is undergoing talks with OpenAI to provide funding guarantees for a data centre in Ohio.

The $250bn deal would help the ChatGPT owner lease a 10-gigawatt project that SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, is building in Piketon, Ohio, 109km (68 miles) south of Columbus, Ohio. It is part of a public-private partnership that allowed SoftBank to build the world’s largest AI data centre on government land owned by the US Department of Energy.

“The demand is not as big as it appears to be because, again, the companies are buying from each other using their own money to some degree, as opposed to, say, OpenAI having such tremendous demand from customers, monetising it properly, and then using customers’ money to buy Nvidia chips. They’re essentially using Nvidia’s money to buy Nvidia chips,” said Aleksandar Tomic, associate dean at Boston College.

The development comes as the Altman-led company is leaning towards an initial public offering, which, according to reporting from The New York Times last month, could be in 2027.

A video showing two plainclothes ICE agents tackling a man at the Las Vegas airport before walking away after bystanders intervened has reignited criticism of the agency’s arrest tactics. ICE later said he was arrested at Los Angeles Airport for overstaying his visa.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

The shooting ends a 12-hour standoff in the city of Bakersfield between suspect and law enforcement.

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the United States have fatally shot a man allegedly holding hostages inside of a building in California.

The shooting ended a 12-hour standoff at an office in Bakersfield that houses a bank branch and school district office.

In a statement, the Bakersfield police said the suspect was killed in “an officer-involved shooting involving Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel”.

It added that “all hostages were located unharmed and received medical evaluation and treatment at the scene”.

Police had originally been called following a bomb threat at the location. Police said the man barricaded himself inside with several people, two of whom were released Tuesday after negotiations with authorities.

Authorities established a wide perimeter around the building, evacuating the nearby City Hall and the police headquarters.

Bakersfield police sergeant Eric Celedon told reporters on Tuesday the department had “every single resource at our disposal out here to bring this to the safest resolution possible”.

Police on Wednesday said the investigation was ongoing and that “significant” law enforcement would remain in the area.

The identity of the suspect was not immediately released and a motive was unclear.

President Trump’s administration is suing four states over their refusal to issue undercover license plates to federal agents, the latest front in the wider struggle between the White House and Democratic-led states over the Republican president’s immigration crackdown.

The Department of Justice alleges in separate lawsuits announced Thursday that Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington state are imposing unconstitutional restrictions that it says impede law enforcement and threaten agents’ safety.

“By denying undercover license plates to DHS components, including ICE, while issuing them to their own state agencies, these governors are pursuing discriminatory and obstructionist policies against federal law enforcement,” said acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche in a statement.

“These actions undermine federal immigration enforcement, allow dangerous criminals to escape justice, and terrorize American communities,” Blanche added.

The Justice Department filed the suits on Wednesday in U.S. district courts in the respective states. The four state governments are accused of trying “to obstruct the Federal Government’s immigration enforcement efforts, even though control over immigration and the nation’s borders is an exclusive federal power.”

Additionally, the Justice Department argues in the suits that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause bars state governments from regulating federal law enforcement.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who oversees her state’s plate program and is also a Democratic candidate for governor, said she’s confident her decisions will hold up in court.

“What ICE did in Maine and continues to do was terrorize our friends and neighbors,” Bellows said in an interview Thursday. “There are no secret police in a democracy and we will always stand up for our Mainers safety and freedom.”

A spokesperson for Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Joy Campbell said the state’s lawyers are “reviewing the complaint and will defend the RMV policy to the greatest extent possible.”

Officials in Washington and Oregon did not respond to a request for comment on the federal action.

Feds say agents are endangered when easily identified

The administration asserts that federal agents “frequently investigate and apprehend violent criminals, including cartel members, gang members, sex offenders, human traffickers, and other violent offenders” and says making those authorities easily identifiable subjects them to increased harassment and potential physical harm.

The lawsuit comes after a back-and-forth between the DOJ and some state officials. The administration previously sent state officials letters demanding they justify their policies.

Maine Atty. Gen. Aaron Frey answered the Justice Department last week, defending his state’s policy and disputing the DOJ’s contention that it has hampered federal enforcement actions.

“Rather, the program reflects a legitimate and constitutional policy choice by the SOS not to allow its resources to be commandeered by the federal government for use in civil immigration enforcement activities that have, in Maine and elsewhere, resulted in multiple incidents of abusive and unconstitutional conduct by DHS officials,” Frey wrote.

Bellows, in her role as secretary of state, announced a pause on confidential license plates in January, after federal authorities ramped up their immigration enforcement activities in the state. Bellows said at the time that the state wanted to be “assured that Maine plates will not be used for lawless purposes.”

The federal suit against Maine argues that the state “has issued confidential license plates to law enforcement agencies for many years” and that “such plates are explicitly authorized under Maine law.” The state’s review this year, the suit argues, resulted in unlawful state regulation of the federal government by requiring federal applicants for state license plates to attest that federal vehicles that obtained confidential plates would not be used for civil immigration enforcement. The suit also states that Maine did not impose commensurate requirements on state or local agencies applying for the plates, making the program discriminatory against the federal government.

Bellows has previously defended her decision.

“When ICE asked for confidential license plates, I said no” because “covert civil immigration enforcement is not something Maine will facilitate,” she said last week.

Arguments are similar to debate over agents’ masks

The Trump administration’s arguments on the license plates are similar to its defense of federal agents wearing masks on their deployments to American cities. That became a flashpoint in an extended government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding, as Democrats on Capitol Hill demanded key changes to how Trump’s mass deportation plans were carried out after masked federal agents killed two U.S. citizen protesters in Minnesota.

The White House and DHS have maintained the agency’s mask policy, and the administration already has won a federal court order blocking a California law that barred law enforcement officials from covering their faces in the state.

Additionally, the administration has been at odds with so-called sanctuary cities where local law enforcement does not assist federal authorities with immigration enforcement. And Blanche has instructed the Justice Department’s Civil Division to identify all state and local laws, policies, and practices that could impede what the administration describes as “lawful federal operations.”

Barrow and Whittle write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. Whittle reported from Scarborough, Maine.

Dozens of ICE agents clashed with protesters using pepper spray to disperse crowds outside a detention centre in New Jersey. Demonstrations were held on the fourth day of a detainee’s hunger strike.