OpenAI delivers a mea culpa to the Australian government in person – but answers still elude

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Jason Kwon’s answers were provided in a helpful, quiet and calm manner. For a company under intense scrutiny, there were no missteps

Open AI’s Jason Kwon flew 15 hours from San Francisco to Sydney to give the company’s first in-person mea culpa after it admitted – in an unsigned email, to a public departmental inbox – that one of its AI agents had accessed a Services Australia website without authorisation and grabbed data related to Medicare.

Kwon – polite, friendly, even-toned – got through a potentially dicey committee hearing unscathed, promising to do better and pledging assistance to Australia. No missteps, no viral moments, just delivering his answers helpfully, in a quiet and calm manner, sympathising with the questioner and the point they were making.

Even the content of his responses evoked the AI assistant he was there to defend.

Asked by Pocock “why did you send an email to an arbitrary department email?” Kwon replied: “In retrospect, we should have done what you’re suggesting”. Asked why Altman wasn’t informed before his meeting with Marles, and why the company didn’t fess up there, Kwon said: “I agree the process by which people became aware of this incident inside our company could have been much better”.