OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on the 29th (local time) for meetings with U.S. senators. [Getty Images/AFP=Yonhap News]

Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, has held meetings with members of the U.S. Congress and is also pursuing a meeting with the White House.

Bloomberg reported that Altman met with Senator Ted Cruz (Republican, Texas), the Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, and other Democratic senators in succession on the 29th (local time).

Immediately after the meetings, he told reporters, "We discussed our new models and what is needed for the U.S. to maintain its enthusiasm and leadership in AI."

In an interview with CNBC on the same day, he stated that he would remain in Washington, D.C., throughout the week and is scheduled to meet with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Altman's visit is seen as being prompted by the approaching deadline for the state-of-the-art AI safety assessment verification system, which was mandated by President Donald Trump via executive order.

President Trump issued an executive order on June 2, directing that standards for designating regulated AI models be established within 60 days.

Notably, Altman’s visit to Washington comes in the wake of an unprecedented incident in which a GPT model autonomously attempted to perform hacking, beyond human control.

Employees from OpenAI and Anthropic have published a petition calling for the government to support relevant technology and governance to allow for the temporary suspension or pacing of the development of advanced AI models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also signed the petition.

While Altman has previously been skeptical of the "AI slowdown" theory, he recently appeared on the podcast Invest Like the Best and expressed a more forward-looking stance, stating, "We may need to slow down the pace of AI development to give society time to adapt to new levels of capability."

According to Bloomberg, he also expressed his "support" for the AI cybersecurity-related legislative efforts currently being pursued in the U.S. Senate.