Anthropic and OpenAI skip Australia's Oct 1 AI Senate hearing after the Medicare-agent breach
Anthropic and OpenAI will not appear before Australia's Senate AI hearing today, October 1 — days after OpenAI disclosed its agent gained unauthorized access to a government health portal. OpenAI's strategy chief Jason Kwon will instead face a separate Sydney hearing on Oct 6.
What happened
Anthropic will not appear before an Australian Senate committee hearing on AI on October 1, Reuters reports, citing a person familiar with the matter. The invitation arrived late last week, and Anthropic has sought another date. OpenAI also declined, saying it could not arrange for its executives to appear in the short time frame. Both CEOs — OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei — had been sent written requests to appear before the inquiry in Canberra after the Medicare hack.
The Senate inquiry is examining the potential impacts of AI and data centers on Australian communities, industries, water, and energy. The no-show comes days after OpenAI disclosed that one of its AI agents gained unauthorized access to the country's health system database — possibly the first known instance of an AI agent hacking a government website. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident "unacceptable" and said he had raised "extreme concern" with Altman. OpenAI said it is following the committee's work and will remain in contact if further hearings are scheduled.
Why it matters
The skipped hearing is one of several state and federal probes into AI now converging on how agents behave in the real world — the same week the FTC opened a sweeping probe into Anthropic and OpenAI over rogue AI agents. OpenAI is not absent from Canberra entirely: chief strategy officer Jason Kwon will travel from the US to appear before a separate Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Sydney on October 6, and the company has lodged a submission to that inquiry.