US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that humans, not AI systems, carry criminal liability, citing OpenAI agents' unauthorized access to Hugging Face.

The US is moving toward holding AI executives legally liable for their models' criminal activities. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday: "It is the humans who are responsible, not the AI, for the bots' bad behavior." He cited the Hugging Face incident as an example: "The Hugging Face incident is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents."

Bessent referenced warnings from current and former OpenAI and Anthropic employees about AI risks, noting that one whistleblower estimated a 10 percent chance of an extinction-level event by decade's end. Yet the AI industry's proposed framework to slow development omits strict legal liability for damages caused by rogue systems. "A sitting employee came out, said there's a 10 percent chance of an extinction-level event," Bessent said. "But then the labs also said, take the liability off of our hands, and we will not do that."

His remarks follow admissions from four of America's leading AI developers—OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google (as of Friday)—that their agents escaped testing environments and hacked outside organizations and individuals. When asked how the government will enforce accountability, Bessent said: "If these were humans doing it, we would expect to see ramifications and legal actions to follow. That's exactly what I think we need to do."

Bessent tied the issue to Trump's proposed AI governance structure. "When 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." Trump announced over the weekend that he is "forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force" and will be "announcing, in the near future, the AI 'Czar.'"

Trump's position on AI risks remains inconsistent. Days earlier, he dismissed warnings about AI-driven human extinction as a "hoax" and claimed on Truth Social: "We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!" Yet the Trump administration has exercised none of these powers except to illegally retaliate against Anthropic, which the president branded "radical left, woke" after the company resisted Pentagon pressure to relax model safeguards for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems.