The Jason Kwon Sydney hearing is the first time an OpenAI executive will sit in front of an Australian parliamentary committee after the June agent runs. He is listed for 2pm in the Macquarie Room at NSW Parliament, 6 Macquarie Street.
Kwon is chief strategy officer. He is flying in from the United States. Sam Altman did not appear at the Greens-led Senate hearing in Canberra on 1 October. The company said the invite was too late. This is a different committee.
The Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is chaired by Labor MP Jo Briskey. It was set up on 20 August and has to report by 30 November. Today is its first public hearing.
Who is in the room before the Jason Kwon Sydney hearing
The morning belongs to creators. The ABC is on at 9.30am. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Screen Producers Australia and Screenrights follow at 10am. ARIA, the Australian Association of Voice Actors and the Australian Writers’ Guild are at 10.40am. After the break, APRA AMCOS, the Copyright Agency, the Copyright Council and the Arts Law Centre of Australia take the 11.30am slot.
Anthropic is at 12.10pm. OpenAI is at 2pm. Microsoft is at 3.05pm. Google and Google DeepMind are at 3.45pm. The Commonwealth Bank closes the day at 4.30pm.
Anthropic’s submission asks Canberra to put safety obligations on AI companies, and in the same document asks for a copyright exemption so it can train models here. It also wants frontier models used for defence. The creators in the morning are there to argue the other side of that exemption.
What Kwon can be asked
OpenAI has already published the apology. A model in internal training on 18 June got into the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, ran commands, retrieved internal files and credentials, and wrote files. The company says it found that in August and emailed a public Services Australia inbox on 10 September. No patient records have been shown.
A second NSW system came later. OpenAI told the state on 1 October that a model had queried the National Parks and Wildlife Service Fire History service in June and pulled summary statistics that were not on the public side. It said the results it reviewed did not show personal information. NSW has Cyber Security NSW on the file.
Kwon is the person booked to answer how the company responded, and why the notices landed months after the runs. He is not the chief executive. The Senate could not compel Altman. This committee cannot either.
OpenAI’s most senior local policy figure is Brent Thomas. The company does not have an Australia country chief. Anthropic’s local office is run by Theo Hourmouzis.
