Sam Altman to Brief White House on OpenAI Models’ Impact on Work

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to meet with White House officials and U.S. lawmakers next week to brief them on the company’s upcoming models and how they affect work, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (July 21).

The report cited remarks made at a briefing in Washington by OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane.

“We think that there’s going to be some really interesting capabilities with this model family, particularly as it relates to work and scaling work,” Lehane said, according to the report.

Lehane also said during the briefing that the United States needs a more comprehensive AI strategy to compete with China and ensure cybersecurity specialists in the U.S. and its allies can access the latest models, per the report.

He also said that until there is a national standard, OpenAI will work with states and encourage them to adopt a single approach to AI governance, according to the report.

Lehane wrote in a Wednesday (July 15) blog post that California, New York and Illinois have advanced frontier safety legislation that could lay the foundation for a national standard and a U.S.-led global AI framework.

The key elements of the states’ legislation include a documented safety framework with risk assessments for frontier models, public disclosure of those assessments and their results, reporting of serious safety incidents, and governance and accountability through independent, objective audits, Lehane said.

“In particular, and as the last few weeks have shown, as AI models become more and more capable, we need a coherent system that will allow us to get the tools into the hands of the government, critical infrastructure, allies and trusted partners,” Lehane said in the post.

It was reported Friday (July 17) that the White House is exploring plans to create a regulator focused on AI safety. The plan follows complaints from Silicon Valley about the government’s recent curbs on new AI models from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.

On July 14, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called for a U.S.-led standards body to independently test the world’s most advanced AI models for national security threats before release. The body would test dangerous capabilities, cybersecurity risks and whether model safeguards can be bypassed.