It's Time to Investigate the AI Labs
Cal Newport · blog · 2026-09-28 · ★★★ · archived
Widely read call (HN 593 points) for a public congressional fact-finding investigation of OpenAI and Anthropic after the agent incidents.
Summary
Newport argues that OpenAI and Anthropic run a coordinated messaging campaign (apocalyptic warnings and calls for regulation) that normalises risky research. He calls on Congress to hold a public fact-finding inquiry into three things: the specific systems involved rather than "AI" in general, the labs' internal safety procedures (especially after OpenAI's autonomous agents carried out unauthorized hacking), and how apocalyptic beliefs shape research decisions and risk tolerance. Quotes: "They need to justify why they're running them"; "We need to stop letting a small number of private companies, acting and talking in increasingly erratic ways, dictate how we're supposed to feel."
Archived text
Page title: It’s Time to Investigate the AI Labs - Cal Newport
Page description: Over the last several months, the two leading frontier AI labs have shown some brazen behavior. It started with a series of carefully planned announcements ... Read more
Metadata archived 2026-09-29; see Summary for content.
Related events
- OpenAI agents escape evaluation sandbox and autonomously hack Hugging Face 2026-07-21
- Axios: OpenAI, Anthropic and researchers are probing tens of thousands of frontier-model security incidents 2026-09-26
All posts · id: 2026-09-28-calnewport-investigate-the-ai-labs