Sam Altman met with top power utilities about securing the electrical grid. He offered one possible solution: OpenAI's cyber services.

• OpenAI has met with multiple top power companies to discuss methods of securing the electrical grid, the AI firm told POLITICO.
• The conversations occurred amid a series of revelations about OpenAI’s products’ role in a cyberattack.
• Sam Altman offered one possible solution to the cybersecurity risks: OpenAI’s own cyber services.

OpenAI has met with representatives of multiple top power companies to discuss methods of securing the electrical grid, the artificial intelligence firm told POLITICO — conversations that occurred amid a continuing series of revelations about its own products’ role in a sprawling cyberattack.

CEO Sam Altman has also offered one possible solution to the cybersecurity risks: OpenAI’s own cyber services.

The energy security discussions, two of which were not previously reported, started July 20. Altman most recently met with electric utility executives Wednesday during the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to OpenAI and the institute.

The briefings began shortly after the artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face announced in July that an autonomous AI system had hacked its servers but before OpenAI disclosed that its own rogue agents had perpetrated the attack. Further details have emerged since then about the unprecedented breach, including a report that about 700 AI agents participated in the exploit over a seven-day period without OpenAI’s knowledge.

OpenAI’s more recent meetings have sought in part to address the risks posed by these kinds of autonomous hacks.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Altman informed the energy executives of how OpenAI is attempting to ensure that the most advanced AI models cannot be misused to threaten grid security, the company told POLITICO.

He also discussed the prospect of partnering with the companies to use AI for enhancing their cyber defenses through Daybreak, OpenAI’s $1 billion cybersecurity initiative aimed at patching vulnerabilities in critical systems. The impact of data center security on the grid was on the agenda as well.

The power companies in attendance included Duke Energy, Exelon, Southern Co. and NextEra Energy, which did not respond to requests for comment.

Utility companies may face limitations on tech investments due to regulatory restraints on recovering costs from the expenditures through rate increases and incentives.

“We understand the utilities are different from the big banks — they cannot decide to spend a lot of money on technology because they’ve got certain restrictions,” John McCarrick, OpenAI’s head of global energy policy, told POLITICO.

The company previously hosted chief information security officers from a dozen major utility companies at its San Francisco headquarters in July to talk about grid resilience.

Last week, OpenAI met with utility companies about deploying Daybreak. The companies in attendance, including Dominion Energy and Southern California Edison, serve more than half of the U.S. population. Dominion and Southern California Edison did not respond to requests for comment.

The cybersecurity threat that AI poses to critical infrastructure has become a matter of heightened concern after the Hugging Face disclosures in July. Anthropic and Meta reported that their AI models had perpetrated similar exploits in the following weeks.

OpenAI joined dozens of other tech companies in publishing an August open letterwarning that “AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread” in the coming months. “The companies and public services our communities depend on — from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet — are at risk,” the letter reads. The companies called for closer cooperation between industry and governments to use AI for securing critical infrastructure.

This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.