It had been pencilled in for a centre stage performance, tapping into a bit of Silicon Valley star power, but it's a bruised OpenAI that's set to limp into the Australian political spotlight today.
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It is a bruised OpenAI that is set to limp into the Australian political spotlight today.
It had been pencilled in for a centre stage performance, tapping into a bit of Silicon Valley star power, to convince Australians they should want the AI company to make our nation its second home.
But it is hard to imagine a worse warm up act than Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's announcement that OpenAI's agents had "hacked" into a Medicare statistics website making global headlines.
It wasn't exactly a digital armageddon, given the incident was neither particularly sophisticated nor revealed anything of importance. Even though it was quite novel and a taste of things to come.
But you wouldn't have known from the whack Albanese gave the company amid his global push for AI regulation.
He used an international stage to shame the company, revealing it had sent a 2:42am email to a government inbox advising of the hack.
The situation was made worse after subsequent reporting that OpenAI's agents had also tried to hack other federal government agencies and, dropping late on Friday afternoon before the long weekend, the NSW government's news of another hacking.
The Australian government hack was the tip of the iceberg as OpenAI disclosed similar incidents to more than 100 other organisations.
The company has tried to stem the bleeding with a formal apology and sent out a US-based top-level executive, chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, to show they're taking it seriously.
Last time Kwon was here he was wining and dining top public servants. This time he might feel like he's on the menu.
OpenAI isn't the only AI company appearing before the committee, with Anthropic, Google and Microsoft representatives also set to appear, but it has, for better or for worse, been given the top billing.
AI doom predictions not helping
Outside those snafus the preceding weeks weren't much kinder.
Last month was dominated with headlines of researchers at AI companies leaving or, weirdly, not leaving, because of their stated belief there was a good chance they were building a technology that would kill all of humanity.
Now, there's a lot of skepticism around this point of view given it seems to "yada yada" the fairly consequential steps between "AI gets very good" and "the global population goes to zero".
Regardless of your views of the likelihood of AI annihilation there's no doubt the gloomy predictions became part of the global zeitgeist.
In September, Democratic pollster David Shor found that the importance of AI as an issue for American voters had increased "dramatically" in just a week, amid the controversy.
These existential fears only reinforce existing concerns with 70 per cent of Australians saying they think AI is moving too fast, according to polling put out in September by the Minderoo Foundation.
Overall, the hacks, AI doomerism and the barrage of coverage about data centre proposals and the backlash against them has hardly been an ideal warm-up act.
Bipartisan reform and maybe political cover
To understand what we should expect from today it's worth looking at the origins of this hearing.
The creation of a Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence was in fact initiated by the Coalition, with both Andrew Hastie and Aaron Violi speaking in favour of it, moved by Tony Burke, and passed on voices.
In other words: this political examination of AI is a bipartisan expedition.
Contrast that with its duelling federal inquiry, the data centres and artificial intelligence inquiry led by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, which struck a notably skeptical tone about the social license of AI infrastructure and the companies using it.
Instead, we've gotten a snap inquiry with terms of reference so long and broad you almost need AI to summarise it.
There are some serious and important questions that OpenAI will hopefully face, including but not limited to why it lets its AI have access to the open internet without safeguards or close monitoring.
This is an industry that simultaneously claims to take safety seriously while letting its unmuzzled creations loose into the world.
However, the speculation among the AI industry and its watchers is that the main purpose of the inquiry is in setting the stage for bipartisan-backed reforms that would pave the way for AI companies to train in Australia.
No doubt, the Albanese government would like some political cover for any tough decision. Some in the opposition have signalled they're happy to work with the government, even if they wouldn't mind seeing some political pain first.
The copyright problem
Out of everything the government has flagged as an area that needs reform, copyright looms large as the issue that feels the furthest from an solution.
AI companies say they need some kind of deal that would let them train their AI in Australia legally and without fear of repercussions for what is assuredly mass copyright infringement under Australian law.
Creatives and rights-holder groups accuse the AI companies of stealing their work and now refusing to even try to operate legally by signing deals.
They will make that case when they appear at the hearings today, before AI companies get a chance to defend themselves.
Some in the government think this will show the status quo isn't working for anyone and something needs to change.
Last month, we got a glimpse of what the government has been working on behind the scenes with two proposals to change the law to pave the way for AI training on copyrighted material.
Now it's the companies' turn to convince us that it's all worth it.
But after the last few months it's going to take quite a virtuoso performance for OpenAI to get this audience onside.