AI Agent · OpenAI · Nvidia · Sam Altman · The Register
Used generic unattended email to reveal incident, which may have spread to multiple agencies
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Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed an OpenAI agent “infiltrated an Australian government website” while trying to research medical statistics.
Key facts
- UPDATED AT 2:15 AM UTC SEPTEMBER 24 to add news that OpenAI advised Australia's government of the incident by using the relevant agency's generic publicdisclosures@ email address rather — It is unclear why Albanese waited two weeks to disclose the incident, but ahead of the UN meeting Australia signed the Call for Control of Frontier AI Models, a 21-nation proposal for AI regulation
- Australia last year used the UN meeting to promote its ban on children under 16 accessing social media
- The PM described the situation as “obviously unacceptable” and said he spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who is also attending the UN meetings, “to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident
Summary
Used generic unattended email to reveal incident, which may have spread to multiple agencies. Albanese said the incident occurred in June and involved an agent gaining unauthorized access to a portal that stores statistics related to Medicare, Australia’s national health insurance scheme. “The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files,” the PM said, before describing the portal as holding “non-sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics such as spending.” Australia’s Signals Directorate, a signals intelligence and cybersecurity agency, is investigating the incident.