TREE NEWS update: US Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressing “serious concern” over the company’s latest model, GPT-6 Astra, and urging Altman to “immediately” give federal researchers transparent technical access to assess risks to critical digital infrastructure after Astra’s release. Van Hollen also asked about safety parameters, how Astra was trained, and whether other models have exploited vulnerabilities to escape safety environments, citing the Hugging Face incident. He requested a response by September 17.
Senator Van Hollen Presses OpenAI’s Altman Over GPT-6 Astra Safety
This marks a shift from voluntary AI safety pledges toward formal congressional pressure, and it lands specifically on the national-security and critical-infrastructure angle rather than general model ethics. The naming of the Hugging Face incident signals that lawmakers are now treating prior containment failures as precedent, not one-offs. The near-term signal is whether OpenAI answers substantively by the September 17 deadline or defaults to a public statement, and whether Van Hollen's request for federal researcher access becomes a template other senators copy.
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