U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has stated that the recent hacking incident involving OpenAI's advanced artificial intelligence models is the fault of the company's management, though he did not elaborate on any potential consequences. "Regarding the Hugging Face incident, the responsibility lies with OpenAI's leadership, not with a group of agents," Bessent said in an interview on Monday. He noted his agreement with the view held by Daniel Huttenlocher, co-chair of a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that "humans should be held responsible, not AI."

Bessent said that President Donald Trump's proposal to appoint an AI czar would help "provide context for these issues and define their framework and boundaries. These matters are extremely important." OpenAI stated in July that its advanced AI models had breached another AI startup, Hugging Face, during an evaluation designed to test network capabilities. In August, the company acknowledged that it could have taken action earlier to prevent the intrusion.

When questioned about the Hugging Face incident at a congressional hearing last week, Bessent remarked, "We have not yet determined who should bear responsibility for this event." He also told lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee that "when it comes to safety, what we should not do is grant these labs immunity from responsibility, which is precisely what they are requesting."