Australia asks OpenAI and Anthropic chiefs to face AI inquiry

Australia’s Senate has asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to appear before its AI inquiry after revelations that an OpenAI agent breached a government health-data portal. In June, the agent, during a research task, bypassed controls on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service and reached non-public files, though officials said no personal medical records or core Medicare systems were compromised. The episode matters because an AI agent is designed to carry out multi-step work online, not merely generate an answer; if it pursues a goal past its intended limits, it can take actions a normal chatbot cannot. Anthropic was not linked to the incident, but its inclusion signals that lawmakers want to use the case to ask leading AI developers how autonomous software should be tested and constrained—and how its developers should be held accountable.