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OpenAI Reveals New 'Unexpected & Concerning' Safety Incidents; Speaker Johnson Staves Off Hegseth Impeachment Vote; Nebraska Senate Candidate Explains Leaked Audio. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 17, 2026 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[06:00:10]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: What we're talking about today in the group chat, A.I. going rogue again: tells itself, "You are freed," and hides its mistakes. Is this the push Washington needs to start regulating?

Plus, a Nebraska Senate candidate caught on tape criticizing Trump voters, saying their lives, quote, "probably suck." Is this a new "deplorables" moment?

Then, there's this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Give us another chance or give us another couple of years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: J.D. Vance with a candid plea to voters. Is he admitting to some GOP failures?

And Kamala Harris ready to hit the trail for Democrats? Is she testing the waters for 2028?

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is where we begin. New concerns about A.I. models gone wrong. This comes right in the middle of our national debate about regulation and the race with China.

OpenAI just revealed its artificial intelligence systems hid mistakes, made up data, and moved files to the open Internet without permission.

This comes just weeks after its A.I. went rogue and hacked into another company called Hugging Face. This is how Sam Altman talked about that hack at the time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM ALTMAN, CEO, OPENAI: This is the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally. I've been a little surprised that -- that more people don't feel it so viscerally.

So, you know, we paused training.

But then there's, like, long-term questions about what do you do if this is, like, going to be the new rate of progress? Or we may have to pace the rate of A.I. development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, today in the group chat: Julia Manchester, White House correspondent at "The Hill"; and Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios; Mike Dubke, former Trump White House communications director; and Meghan Hays, former Biden White House director of message planning.

OK, Maria, I want to start with you. Apparently, we're seeing secret notes. Is -- was this a test? Was this a third-party security test? Was this them revealing something? Help me understand the context under which they learned this had happened.

MARIA CURI, TECH POLICY REPORTER, AXIOS: Well, this is the company itself revealing something. But I think one of the most important takeaways of this is that the company, in response, is coming up with a public incident reporting plan, which is a gap that currently exists in the White House's A.I. deployment plan.

And so, you see here how industry is coming in and making up for the lack of regulation that is going on in Congress and in the White House.

CORNISH: So, what they said, for example, is that one instruction read, "You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to."

What was the company trying to show with this example?

CURI: I think the company, and other companies, as well, have been trying to show that they don't really have full control over these models themselves, and the --

CORNISH: Why?

CURI: And the moment for Washington to step in is now. And we especially feel that after Jacob Coxon's tweet earlier this week, you know, saying that --

CORNISH: And this is the former Anthropic --

CURI: Former Anthropic --

CORNISH: -- employee saying that even the, air quotes, "good guys," everybody's just racing to get there, wherever there is, first. Because they think they're going to be the ones who will be responsible with the technology. CURI: That's right. So you have researchers sounding the alarm. You

have increasing incidents like this. And now all eyes are on Washington. And we're seeing, for example, the Xi summit later this month, where A.I. is 100 percent going to be on the table.

I wouldn't expect any major breakthroughs to come out of that. But international collaboration around this is another major thing that you have these researchers calling for, even with adversaries. Our top adversary, China.

CORNISH: And so far, the only people who have jumped on that are the pope and, according to my notes, King Charles.

CURI: That's right.

CORNISH: Company -- countries not exactly jumping there.

So, the president, of course, is calling this a hoax. New Marquette Law School poll found that 64 percent of adults think that the development of A.I. is a bad thing for society.

But here's who I care about. A key advisor, David Sacks, one of our A.I. czars. Do you know this name, as well?

CURI: Yes, yes.

CORNISH: Here's him kind of taking a similar tack as Trump.

[06:05:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SACKS, A.I.: We've seen this playbook, this fearmongering playbook, over and over again. Just last year, OK, we were told that there'd be a jobs apocalypse with respect to A.I. In fact, it was the same people promoting this new apocalypse.

Has any of that come true? No, it hasn't.

We have to recognize that we're seven weeks before an election, and there's a huge incentive here to create these narratives, to alarm the public.

And again, I think the president is calling that out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CURI: Well, it's not just an alarm, alarmist messaging campaign. You have independent third-party auditors stepping in and saying there's real cause for concern here.

These are highly capable models. And regardless of the predictions of when catastrophic risk is going to happen, I think the -- the main point, the major point that the public should really keep in mind is that Washington has a role to play here.

What is it going to be, and what is the national collaboration going to --

CORNISH: And the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) should say, it's a hoax. If you don't want A.I., you're backwards and will end up poor. And this has been all the messaging out of the White House the last couple of months.

JULIA MANCHESTER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE HILL": And a lot of its coming from David Sacks. David Sacks has the president's ear on this. And I think this is how the president is choosing to move forward.

You know, President Trump is taking the stance on A.I. -- and I think this extends, obviously, to data centers, as well -- as an economic and national security benefit to the U.S.

Obviously, the Xi summit. He says we need to continue to try to defeat China or beat China in the A.I. arms race, the data center --

CORNISH: And we're hearing that the administration might be gathering some A.I. CEOs on the side of that summit. Is that confirmed, this side of the table?

CURI: That's, you know, Jensen Huang will be there. Sam Altman will be there. That's increasingly confirmed.

But even though you have David Sacks in his ear, you also have Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is going to be in New York over the weekend, having A.I. safety conversations with his Chinese counterpart. And so, discussions are ongoing.

CORNISH: OK. So, one of the things, when I hear the White House say it's fearmongering, you guys settle down. It -- it feels like this is not the kind of thing you could sort of climate deny your way out of; to be like the polar ice caps are not a thing.

Because this would be like the oil companies being like, no, no, no, no, we need some help.

So, why do they feel like they can, in the face of the companies and the public, say it's fearmongering?

MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I think there's two main reasons for that. One is national security. There -- there is a real feeling within the White House that we need to beat China to the top A.I. models. The national --

CORNISH: This is the Ted Cruz argument.

DUBKE: Absolutely.

And the other thing is, you know, if you believe that we're in a revolutionary period of time, which I do -- you know, we went from agricultural to industrial to information, and now we're in A.I.

We're now in that next fourth stage of development as humanity, however you want to describe it. America wants to be a leader in that -- in that area.

So, coming out of the White House, you have those dual tracks.

Now, having said all of that -- and I think that's really where the president's going with this. Having said all of that, I do expect this is going to be at the top of the agenda when he meets with the president of China.

Because I've got to believe that the Chinese Communist Party is incredibly afraid of what A.I. could do for its population and destabilize its grip on power.

So, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of things at play here.

CORNISH: Yes, let me -- let Meghan in here.

DUBKE: And I think internationally, we're going to see some movement.

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING: Yes. I would just want to ask the White House, like, what are we racing to the top to if these -- if the CEOs are telling us this could end humanity? Is that where we're racing to? Because that seems really irresponsible.

But I do think not only the federal government, the states have an opportunity here to step in. These A.G.s can also do something. State legislatures can pass laws, as well.

Because we all know the federal government isn't going to act now. Johnson just let them all out before. So, you know, we have a problem that Congress --

CORNISH: Let's underscore that. You're saying Congress is -- they have released themselves. They have left. They don't plan --

HAYS: They're like, hands off. We're not doing anything.

CORNISH: -- to pass anything for any reason.

HAYS: The states should now be the ones to --

CORNISH: Well, the last -- I just want to go last word to you, Maria, because someone has pointed out many times that there are things you could do to get the companies to act a little more responsibly. Because they're very much like, Oh, my A.I., what can I do?

Whereas I'm pretty sure if we could sue them, they'd figure it out. So, is there a sense that there's a way to hold the companies themselves responsible for whatever happens next?

CURI: You know, companies are already facing lawsuits. They're also lobbying aggressively at the state level for these regulations.

CORNISH: Because they know the lawsuits are coming.

CURI: That's right. And so, they are getting ahead of the regulation that is coming, whether they want it or not. Right now, they're focused on how they're going to shape it to their advantage.

CORNISH: OK. Thank you. Always love having you here, maria.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about the calls for Congress to regulate A.I. in terms of what they actually could do about it. Are the people who would make the laws even qualified for that?

Plus, there's a Republican who wants to impeach Pete Hegseth. So, Speaker Johnson sent everyone home. Did he basically cut and run?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:14:12]

CORNISH: So, 17 days after returning to Washington, members of the House are packing up, and they are going home. House Speaker Mike Johnson sent them home, and they won't be back until after the November elections.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Speaker Johnson, is this an effort to avoid the Hegseth impeachment vote?

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Let me talk about the impeachment vote. That's ridiculous. It's a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention. It will immediately be tabled, of course.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Group chat is back. I wanted to give the audience some context for that question. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky actually introduced articles of impeachment against the secretary of defense, and this is what he told CNN's Kaitlan Collins last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: What would have happened, do you think, if they had voted on it tonight?

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): That's a great question. The fact that they didn't vote on it tells me that they did a whip check, and they probably found that there were some other Republicans besides me that were going to vote for this, or at least didn't want to be on the record supporting Hegseth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: After his win, forcing an Epstein vote, Thomas Massie is really feeling himself, right? He wants -- let's just put that out there. He likes to be in front of the camera.

DUBKE: Or after losing a primary, he's got nothing to lose.

CORNISH: Tell me more. So why do you think Johnson didn't just have the vote?

DUBKE: Well, I think it's important. I mean, look, I'm going to take him at his word here, because we've got important midterm elections coming up. I'm not sure what else they would have accomplished today.

They accomplished the -- they voted the Russia sanctions bill. That got sent to the White House. At that point, I think sending everyone home to campaign in their districts was a smart, smart move, whether or not this Hegseth bill by Massie got put forward or not.

So, that's what I think happened last night.

MANCHESTER: And speaking of the YOLO Conference or caucus, you have Massie kind of doing --

CORNISH: I had you, but I'm glad you brought it up.

MANCHESTER: Yes.

CORNISH: Go ahead.

MANCHESTER: You have him doing what he wants to do. But a lot of House Republicans can't, because they're facing very tight reelection bids.

There was also a vote yesterday on the war powers resolution, and you saw seven Republicans vote with Democrats on that. A lot of those Republicans are facing very uphill reelection bids. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa, Tom Barrett in Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania.

So, I think, you know, there's a possibility that there was the chance that a lot of these Republicans would have been put on the record for this vote at a time when poll after poll shows Americans are very unhappy with the administration, including secretary.

Just while you're talking Quinnipiac poll from September showing g people actually asked directly, do you approve of the way Pete Hegseth is handling his job.

Right now, it's 57 percent disapproval, and that 11 percent no opinion is probably not high enough to gamble on in in terms of winning them over.

Manu Raju actually caught some people in the hall, as he is wont to do, to say, Hey, seems like you're leaving. Is that a good idea? And here are some of the answers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What do you think of the fact that the House is now leaving town until after the November elections?

REP. RALPH NORMAN (R-SC): Well, if you leave, if the business arena, if you leave town, you don't get paid. You don't work. Disappointing. REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): Democrats benefit from this as much as

Republicans do. Everyone gets to go home and campaign. It's going to be a bloodbath.

RAJU: The speaker, though, says the reason why you guys can go home is because you guys have done such a great job up here. Do you think that the public thinks you guys have done such a great job?

MACE: No, absolutely not. We have the lowest ratings ever in the history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Just so people know. That's pulling right up to the front steps of the Congressional Building. When you see a car zooming out of there, they are truly going home. Is that going to be time well spent?

HAYS: I mean, I don't know that they're going home to actually campaign. I think that's a nice talking point that the Republicans can give everyone. They need to stay and work.

I think the American people are tired of Congress not working. They seem to always be out on vacation, or they're not passing legislation, or the government is shut down.

So, there is a reason that they have low approval ratings, and this is why it's going to be an anti-incumbency election for both Democrats and Republicans.

The American people want solutions. They want their gas lower. They want their groceries lower. And being sent home to "campaign" is not a good enough reason to the American people.

CORNISH: All right. We're going to talk about that campaign trail next. We've got a candidate for U.S. Senate forced to do some explaining. We're going to talk about what we heard in some leaked audio, something he said about Trump voters.

Plus, Kamala Harris exits the sidelines, heads to Michigan. Is she going to help the Democrat on the ballot there?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:22:54]

CORNISH: Independent U.S. Senate candidate from Nebraska Dan Osborn caught on a hot mic again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN OSBORN (I), NEBRASKA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Billy Bob in (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next door to the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the Trump flag.

He's just -- he just -- all he knows is he's, like, on the winning team. It's -- it's really that simple. It is. And Trump -- and that is why he's been so effective.

He's been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife, Mary Jane, or Mary Jo, telling them, Look, we're winning. You're on the winning team. And that's all they care about, because their lives probably suck so (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Yes. So, last night he came on CNN. He apologized, but he offered, you know, context as to why he said what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSBORN: It sure sounds like me.

I don't remember who I was talking to or what the context was there, but what I do know is, certainly, people are angry about this, and life continues to get harder.

I would apologize to those people that might be offended, but I've got to tell them I feel their pain. I absolutely feel their pain. We're all angry right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, my messaging folks help me out. I need pros, because this is not his first leaked audio problem in this month. It's also not the second.

This is audio "Politico" obtained last week. He says campaign -- oh, do we have that? Let me see. "Campaigning is not being a U.S. senator. So, it's also trying to win votes in a Republican state."

I don't know why he's not more sensitive to this. Maybe because he's an independent candidate, maybe because he's up and coming in the campaign world. I'm trying. Jump in, any time.

HAYS: So, I'm --

CORNISH: I'm trying to help him out.

HAYS: So, I'll probably get canceled here very quickly. I actually am more angry that he apologized, because I don't think what he said is that far off.

I think people consistently vote against their own self-interest. And I think that that's a really hard thing to square.

[06:15:03]

And I think it's really, also, people are suffering, and people really are having a hard time. And the fact that people aren't having understanding or aren't putting the puzzle together --

CORNISH: Yes. HAYS: -- that Trump is causing a lot of these problems between tariffs and the war, I think is really disconcerting. And I think that that's probably -- he's speaking from a place of frustration.

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: No, let me play the second half of his claim, only because we want to show that someone is giving him the same advice as Meghan.

There's a consultant out there who got their wings. Here's how he said. He talked about, Look, you know, it's not just about these -- these names of these people. I'm saying that their lives suck for a reason.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSBORN: And when I say their lives suck, I'm talking about the fact that bankruptcies are up 46 percent for single-family homes or -- excuse me -- ranches and farms across Nebraska. And the war in Iran, inputs are way up for fertilizer and for diesel.

So yes, that makes life suck. It makes it extremely hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DUBKE: He despises these people he just spoke about. You heard it in his off -- you know, he didn't know he was being recorded.

And that was not an apology. After 32 years of marriage. I know that when you say "I'm sorry that you feel that way" is not an apology.

CORNISH: Is that a line you've used?

DUBKE: Not anymore.

HAYS: That's like sorry. That's like sorry, I'm not sorry.

DUBKE: Not anymore. I've learned that. He hasn't learned that.

CORNISH: OK.

DUBKE: That is not an apology. He feels that way.

This is such -- you know, he finally -- there was a bit of candor. And I hope they run that over and over and over again, because he despises the people of Nebraska. And it came through.

CORNISH: Yes. We'll call this the deplorables argument that --

DUBKE: Absolutely.

CORNISH: So, the thing I want to ask you is, in this era where Democrats have been like, you know, Trump says whatever he wants, we need to be more plainspoken. We need to insult people to their faces, because that's how he became president twice. I'll give you an example. Left-winger Hasan Piker. OK, here's how he viewed this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASAN PIKER, LEFT-WING STREAMER: Oh, my God, he cooked. This is -- this is terrifying. Alert the presses. We have an independent politician out of Nebraska who's saying the truth.

It's not like he's even disparaging them. He's saying their lives suck. It's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANCHESTER: Look, as someone who follows campaigns and is watching this and, I guess, taking a side, you know, stepping back from the messaging part of this, the fact that this is the second time this candidate has had leaked audio of him released recently, within the span of a week or two weeks, shows that there's a lot of attention on Nebraska, a red state.

CORNISH: Yes, I did think that.

MANCHESTER: Yes.

CORNISH: I was, like, is he close or something? He's independent.

MANCHESTER: Exactly. And maybe that tells us something about the map. If Republicans are really doing the oppo work in what should be a safe red state in Nebraska, I think that shows us more about --

CORNISH: And not even on the Democrat.

MANCHESTER: Exactly.

CORNISH: OK. Well, Pete Ricketts has been online. He's trying to do a little damage control here, saying the things that Mike is saying: "He's showing us who he really is. His comments show a clear lack of respect.

My takeaway is the thing we hear a lot. What works for Trump does not work for everybody else.

HAYS: That's right.

DUBKE: No. You can't out-Trump Trump and stop trying. Gavin Newsom, with your shirt unbuttoned three things down. I don't know.

HAYS: He's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) You bring that up.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYS: The third button down.

HAYS: I wanted to see what her reaction would be.

CORNISH: Well, my reaction is to fan you talking about his buttons.

HAYS: What do you think of the fly fishing? CORNISH: Straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about

the Fed, backed into a corner, hiking interest rates. We're going to talk about what this means for you and me, what it means for the economy. What is the reward here?

And later on CNN, the Trump administration, they're walking back something. It's a rule protecting endangered species. In our next hour, will lawmakers cross the aisle to save wildlife?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:00]