Experts say ‘fairly minor’ breach is a portent of things to come and proprietary closed systems like OpenAI are ‘the least of the worries’.
Anthony Albanese says an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI hacked Medicare and three other systems in June – and the company only told Australia earlier this month.
The prime minister has expressed his “extreme concern” over the incident, although he noted no personal information is believed to have been accessed in the breach.
The agent also accessed the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health, and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
OpenAI was co-founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman in 2015.
OpenAI, one of the best-resourced AI companies on Earth, sent an email to a public-facing Australian government address, three months after the hack.
OpenAI said it found out about the agent’s access in August.
On 10 September, it sent an email to a general Australian government email address which is monitored once a day, advising its AI agent had hacked the country’s universal healthcare system.
On 15 September, Services Australia told the Australian Signals Directorate. The minister for government services, Katy Gallagher, was told on 17 September.
Services Australia’s first interaction with OpenAI was on Tuesday this week, 22 September.
The acting prime minister, Richard Marles, met with Altman earlier in September, but Marles said Altman did not mention his company’s hack of Australia’s health system to Marles at that meeting.
Prof Toby Walsh, the chief scientist at UNSW’s AI Institute, said he believed Australia should be prosecuting OpenAI, a company known to have “terrible agent governance”.