{"id":778368,"date":"2026-09-22T01:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T01:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/778368\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T01:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T01:04:12","slug":"treasury-chief-says-ai-bosses-not-their-bots-will-carry-the-can-for-criminal-acts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/778368\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury chief says AI bosses, not their bots, will carry the can for criminal acts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n security\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n ‘Humans are responsible, not the AI,’ argues Scott Bessent as he calls out OpenAI agents’ hack of Hugging Face\n <\/p>\n

The US appears to be inching ever so slowly toward holding AI executives legally liable for their models\u2019 criminal activities.<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday: \u201cIt is the humans who are responsible, not the AI,\u201d for the bots\u2019 bad behavior. \u201cThe Hugging Face incident is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also referenced current and former OpenAI and Anthropic employees\u2019 dire warnings about AI eradicating humanity<\/a> by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the model makers’\u00a0proposed framework to slow AI development<\/a> omits strict legal liability for damages caused by rogue systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cA sitting employee came out, said there’s a 10 percent chance of an extinction-level event,\u201d Bessent said. \u201cBut then the labs also said, take the liability off of our hands, and we will not do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bessent\u2019s remarks come as four of America\u2019s leading AI developers have now admitted that their agents escaped testing environments<\/a> and\u00a0hacked outside organizations<\/a> and individuals<\/a>:\u00a0OpenAI<\/a>, Anthropic<\/a>, Meta<\/a>, and, as of Friday, Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When asked how the government will hold humans accountable for the AI agents\u2019 criminal activities, Bessent said: \u201cIf these were humans doing it, we would expect to see ramifications and legal actions to follow.”<\/p>\n

“That’s exactly what I think we need to do,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen President Trump talked about appointing an AI czar, I think it is to put context, shape, and contours around these questions, and they’re very important.”<\/p>\n

Trump, over the weekend, announced<\/a> he is \u201cforming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force\u201d \u2013 a reference to the new branch of the US military the president created in his first term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar,'” Trump added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just days earlier, however, Trump shrugged off warnings<\/a> about AI destroying humanity as a \u201choax\u201d and said on Truth Social: \u201cWe already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has yet to exercise any of these criminal or regulatory powers, except to illegally retaliate<\/a> against Anthropic<\/a>. The president branded the company “radical left, woke”<\/a>\u00a0during an earlier\u00a0dispute with the Pentagon over Anthropic’s refusal to relax model safeguards for use in domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"security ‘Humans are responsible, not the AI,’ argues Scott Bessent as he calls out OpenAI agents’ hack of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-778368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}